


The Master of Latham Hall

by Kryptaria



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, But Sherlock isn't the ghost, Fluff, I also promise that John isn't the ghost, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Slightly an AU, So no need to worry about that, Sussex Downs, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-16 20:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 47,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/pseuds/Kryptaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after meeting Sherlock Holmes, John Watson has successfully kept only one secret from the world's only consulting detective: the most important secret he's ever had.</p><p>Now, drawn into an impossible web of murders at Latham Hall, John learns the terrible price a man must pay for keeping certain things secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pati79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pati79/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Хозяин Лэтэм-холла](https://archiveofourown.org/works/830306) by [Rimmaara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rimmaara/pseuds/Rimmaara)



> This is an AU for two reasons: First, it's a Halloween fic. Second, and more important, John and Sherlock have been together for ten years, which meant either setting this story in 2019 (and watching my sci-fi brain explode) or moving their meeting back several years. I chose the latter. Thus, John is a post 9/11 veteran of the Iraq War, and they are both older now, in 2012, than they are in BBC canon.
> 
> This was going to be an entry in the fuckyeahjohnlockfanfic October '12 challenge, until I realized the story needed far more than 5000 words to do it justice.
> 
> Please note which archive warnings are and are not checked.
> 
> Special, deepest thanks to Snogandagrope and Mitaya who, as always, are with me through every word, typo, and insane idea. I love you both!
> 
> Finally, a belated happy birthday to Pati-79! I would have posted this yesterday, but I want to stick to the calendar in the fic.

**Monday, 22 October, 1945**

“Not supposed to feel like going into battle, is it?” Reggie asked, meeting his best man’s eyes in the mirror. Despite their near-identical uniforms, they were a mismatched pair, Reggie short and broad, his thinning black hair creeping high up off his forehead, and Harold with a thatch of neat dark brown hair that matched his moustache.

“You’re making a right mess of yourself,” Harold scolded, giving Reggie’s shoulder a push to turn him around. A couple of tugs straightened his uniform jacket. “See?”

Reggie’s grin was lopsided and nervous. “Right, right. Christ, I still can’t believe she said yes. You don’t think she’s run off, do you?”

“If she did, she’s a fool.” One more pat, and then Harold stepped back, looking Reggie over. “All squared away, Major Stewart, sir!” he barked, his grin at odds with his crisp military bearing.

Reggie grinned back, thanking God that they’d both lived this long. After so much bloodshed and loss, it was about damned time that something good came into their lives. “Once more unto the breach, eh, Captain Latham?” he asked, nudging his best friend.

They fell into step side-by-side, walking out of the guest suite and down the hall. Harold’s grin faded a bit and he bowed his head in thought, hands clasped behind his back. Already plagued by pre-wedding jitters, Reggie’s gut twisted even more. He caught Harold by the arm and asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Oh, nothing.” Harold unclasped his hands and rubbed at his chin as he took a deep breath. He continued walking, stopping only when they reached the grand foyer that looked to have been transplanted right out of a proper medieval castle, with a stone-railed balcony running around three sides. The fourth was occupied by a split staircase that ran down from the right and left to meet in the middle at a landing. Another staircase stretched from the landing into the middle of a sea of black and white marble squares, like a giant chessboard. Reggie always thought that suits of armor wouldn’t have been out of place there.

“Harold... What aren’t you telling me?” Reggie asked worriedly. “The war is ended, and we have a wedding ahead of us. This is a time for celebration, not dark thoughts. Save those for the Front.”

Harold rested his hands on the carved stone balustrade and looked across the way. “I’d invite you for drinks tonight,” he said, nodding to the trophy room door where they’d whiled away many a quiet evening, “but I suppose your bride will have your full attention. Women are like that, after all.”

Reggie chuckled. “I expect so, though I’ll probably be able to get away tomorrow night. Or the night after that,” he added with a grin and another nudge.

Harold’s laugh wasn’t quite genuine. There was some unfathomable darkness in his eyes, but when he spoke, his voice was steady and strong. “Let’s not take chances with that, then. I am, as you well know, a confirmed bachelor.”

“Nonsense! You just haven’t met the right woman, that’s all. Believe me, when you do, she’ll change your life,” Reggie said. His grin turned silly and he knew it, but he couldn’t help it.

Instead of grinning, Harold shook his head. “I’m quite set in my ways. But Latham Hall should be filled with children, Reggie. I can’t rattle around in this old place by myself.” He turned and put a hand on Reggie’s shoulder, looking down into his eyes. “I want you and your bride to live here, Reggie. After the War. I know your home was destroyed in the bombing, and it’ll be years before it’s all properly rebuilt. What sort of way is that to start a new family?”

“Harold,” Reggie said, awed. “Harold, we couldn’t —”

“Actually, you must, unless it’s to be pistols at dawn on the great lawn,” Harold said, a glint of humor finally returning to his eye. He reached into his uniform jacket, medals flashing as he disturbed the lay of the fabric. From an inside pocket, he pulled a thick sheaf of paper folded in thirds. “I meant to give this to you after, but... well, I’d rather this be private.”

“What —” Reggie began, taking the papers. He unfolded them, and his mouth gaped as he skimmed the fine legal print. “My God. Harold...”

“Latham Hall is yours, my friend. The sole caveat is that you allow me to reside here with you, until the end of my days.”

Tears stung Reggie’s eyes. “Harold...” Overcome, he let out a laugh and pulled Harold into an embrace, pounding his back. “Yes! Here I’d thought marriage would separate us, what with you here in Sussex and me in London.”

“Never, old friend,” Harold swore, returning the embrace just as fiercely.

Clasping Harold’s shoulders one last time, Reggie grinned at his best friend, blurred through tears. “Let’s go tell Eleanor together.”

“Not supposed to see the bride before the wedding,” Harold said, his eyes also glistening. “As your best man, the duty falls to me to see that all the traditions are observed.”

“Sod the traditions. We’re a family now — all three of us,” Reggie said, taking Harold’s arm and turning away from the stairs, heading right for the other wing of the house in search of the bride.

 

~~~

 

**Return of greatness? Name cleared as the truth about Scotland Yard’s once-reviled consulting detective is revealed**

By KATIE CLARK

PUBLISHED: 10:56 GMT, 19 February 2007

Sherlock Holmes, once the darling of the London press, has been restored to greatness. In a press conference this morning at Scotland Yard, Deputy Commissioner Miller formally thanked Holmes for his undercover work in dismantling the criminal enterprise of James Moriarty, known to the public as Richard Brook.

In March of 2004, London was rocked by a series of high-profile crimes, including the break-in at the Tower of London. Holmes was arrested, only to escape police custody after taking his assistant, former RAMC Captain John Watson, as his apparent hostage. Later, the veteran of the Iraq War was accused of being complicit in Holmes’ escape, though the charges were dropped in the Scotland Yard corruption scandal that followed.

In the years that followed, Watson further gained some measure of underground fame when graffiti and posters in support of Holmes and Watson appeared throughout London. Sporting such slogans as ‘I fight Watson’s War’ and ‘I believe in Sherlock,’ the movement gained momentum in major cities throughout the world and across the internet, due in part to Watson’s popular blog.

[Click here] for the Watson’s War gallery.

It is rumoured that Holmes is considering a defamation lawsuit against Kitty Riley, whose unauthorized story of Holmes’ alleged criminal career was a London bestseller for three weeks in August of 2004.

 

~~~~

 

**Monday, 22 October 2012**

Estate agent Madge Granger walked into the grand foyer, looking up at the architecture with a sense of awe tinged with sadness. The black and white marble chessboard floor was in good enough shape, but the wood trim on the walls was scored, the stonework chipped in places and filthy everywhere from years of subtle accumulation of fireplace soot and dust. It really was a shame that the building had been allowed to fall into decay.

When Mrs. Stewart had contacted the office, Madge had done her homework. Latham Hall wasn’t listed as a country house of note. In fact, it was all but unknown in Sussex, something that irked Madge to no end. She made it a point to know her market, and Latham Hall should have been right up there with Petworth, Uppark, and Bateman’s. A place like this could have fallen under the National Trust, but it would take far too much money to restore, and a borderline building like Latham Hall wouldn’t make the cut — not with public funding, anyway.

Hopefully she could find a rich buyer who’d take it intact. She had a few contacts, though in this economic climate, there seemed to be fewer every year. If not, though, the property would go for a substantial fortune. It’d be a shame to tear down the building to put up condos or tract housing, but that decision was out of Madge’s hands.

“I know it’s difficult, selling property that’s been in the family so long,” she said sympathetically, hoping the young woman, late into her pregnancy, wasn’t going to burst into tears at the thought of selling the family home.

But the woman just smiled at Madge, saying, “Oh, it hasn’t. I mean, it’s my husband’s family house now, but —” Laughing, she shook her head. Mrs. Sophie Stewart was small and pretty, with honey-toned skin and artificial blond highlights striping her hair. Madge guessed she was about seven months into her pregnancy. “It’s all very complicated. I don’t even know the story, and we’ve been married going on three years now. Honestly, I find the house a bit... spooky.”

No surprise there. These old houses were full of creaks and cold spots. Madge gave Sophie a quick, unobtrusive once-over, taking in the flushed cheeks and puffing breath, and offered, “If you’d like, I can show myself around. No offence, dear, but you look like you could use a little rest.”

Sophie laid a hand on her belly, her smile resigned. “Thanks. I keep telling myself, just a couple more months. If you need anything, I’ll be in the kitchen. I’ll have a pot of tea waiting, if you’d like?”

“Please.” With one more smile, Madge crossed the foyer, deciding to start upstairs. She could understand the young couple’s decision to sell. An old house like this would cost a fortune in upkeep — a fortune better spent preparing for a new baby.

She wondered how the Stewart family had come to live in Latham Hall. She’d have to do some more digging when she got back to the office.

 

~~~

 

The kitchen at Latham Hall was huge and had been modernised in the sixties, which had made cooking a ghastly experience until Sophie had taken charge. She hadn’t married into the sort of money worthy of living in a stately home, but that had never been her concern, and she was able to stay within their means. The microwave was essential, as was the coffee machine and the mixer. The bread machine was a luxury that paid back its weight in gold with fresh whole wheat loaves and banana bread muffins on weekends.

She plugged in the kettle and considered a recipe for cinnamon raisin bread. Outside, the leaves were starting to turn on the young trees encroaching on the once beautiful back lawn, now long since gone to weeds and tall grass. She loved the autumn, and she hoped that wherever they ended up living, it would have at least a piece of this kind of beauty. A little backyard, she decided — somewhere she could have a small garden and a couple of shade trees, perhaps a swing, once the baby was old enough.

She was too tired to fuss with starting the bread machine, though, and contented herself with leaning on the counter as she waited for the kettle to boil. Any little activity seemed to steal her breath, these days. Two more months of pregnancy was two months too long. Next time, Ethan could carry the baby, like a seahorse.

“Ellie?” a quavering voice called from the sunny patch by the back door, where an ancient-looking man sat in a powered wheelchair. He was squinting around; these days, his vision didn’t reach more than ten feet.

“It’s Sophie, Dad. Remember?” Sophie asked apologetically, hurrying to his side as best she could. At ninety-three, his memory was finally going, taking him back to the days before his wife had died. Sophie had never met her, though her portraits were scattered throughout the Hall.

“Sophie,” he repeated, looking up at her with once-sharp eyes. Slowly, he smiled. “Sophie, little darling. Ethan’s sweetheart.”

“That’s right, Dad.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Do you want some tea?”

He huffed and beamed up at her. “Brandy, there’s a good lass.”

“Tea it is,” she said agreeably. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Sod the doctors. Lived longer than every doctor I’ve ever had, till this last one. He’s a child. A quack!”

Laughing, she gave him another affectionate kiss and went to start the tea. She could only pray to be in such good health at his age. The man had the constitution of an ox and the stubborn backbone to match. Of course, that could only get him so far, and much as it broke her heart, it was time for him to live somewhere with proper full-time care.

Ethan wasn’t happy about the decision to sell, but they’d gone over the finances backwards and forwards, and there was no way they could afford a baby, Reginald’s care, and an old manor that was falling apart. Really, the sale of the house would fix everything, sad as it was to think that they’d leave the place where three generations of Stewarts had grown up. Reginald and Eleanor had been married right here at Latham Hall back during the War, and that tradition had followed right down to her own wedding to Ethan. They would be the last Stewarts to wed here.

Thinking of Ethan reminded her that he should have been home by now. Speed dial one, two rings, and then she sighed as she heard the _beep_. God, she hated voicemail.

“Ethan? The estate agent’s here. I thought you were going to be home by now? Hope you’re running late because of some rich client and not traffic again. Love you.”

She hung up just as she heard a crash upstairs, thankfully not from the wheelchair where Reginald had fallen back into a doze. Hurriedly unplugging the kettle, Sophie waddled — yes, waddled — to the door and called out, “Madge?”

No answer, except for the violently loud sound of a door slamming shut.

Worry crept through her. What if something had happened? “Madge?” she shouted more loudly as she headed out into the grand foyer, looking up. She didn’t want to face those stairs unless she had no choice.

Movement caught her eye at the railing, a flicker of pale light, making her heart jolt. Madge had been wearing a smart navy blue dress, she recalled, but this looked more like a light olive green. Had someone else come inside, perhaps an assistant working with Madge?

And then something hit the stone balustrade, tumbling down, down, limbs flailing, and the body of Madge Granger, estate agent, hit the black and white marble floor in a spreading pool of bright crimson, to the sound of Sophie’s screams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thursday, 25 October, 1945**

“So much for a night or two,” Harold said as he poured two generous portions of brandy. Reggie thought he heard an edge of bitterness in Harold’s voice, but that was understandable. Side-by-side, they’d been through life and death and worse, and now a woman had done what the whole of the German army hadn’t.

Despite the sad edge that thought raised, Reggie was grinning now as he’d been for four glorious days, ever since the wedding. “I swear by my soul, Harold, you need to find the right woman. I feel like a new man.” He took the offered snifter and raised it in toast. “Here’s to you finding your own happiness, old boy. They call it ‘wedded bliss’ for a reason, you know.”

“I’ll enjoy it by proxy.” Without drinking, Harold smiled wistfully as he took his customary armchair opposite Reggie. Firelight played over them both, filling the room with a smoky warmth that chased away the damp chill of Latham Hall. “I’ll leave the marriage and family to you.”

“You can say that all you want, right up until the night she gives me my first son — your godson,” Reggie reminded hm. “I expect you right beside me, waiting for the midwife’s news.”

“Always at your side,” Harold promised.

Those words changed the quality of Reggie’s grin to something older and sadder but deeper. Those words had guided their lives since the day they’d run straight into the guns of Hell and come out the other side together, if not whole. Spilled blood made them brothers far more than shared blood ever had. “Always,” Reggie promised, and only then drank the toast that Harold had refused earlier.

This time, Harold drank as well, and their contented sighs slipped between the cracks and snaps of the fire. The future stretched before them, inevitable and ineffable, but here and now, the world felt timeless and eternal: A warm fire, a good brandy, and two best friends sharing them both. A man could want no more in life. Eleanor was an added blessing for Reggie, the only one he couldn’t share with Harold. The thought saddened him.

“So where is she now?” Harold asked with that uncanny way of his, as though he could see Reggie’s thoughts.

“Drawing room. Learning to play the piano. I’ll forego the part of wedded bliss that involves practicing scales,” Reggie declared with a chuckle. Needing to lighten the mood, he eyed Harold’s square jaw, now framed by a short, neat growth of dark hair. “Didn’t waste a minute, did you?” he asked, remembering that beard from days long past, before military rules and regulations required that Harold shave off all but his moustache.

“I wanted to be ready for that portrait you commissioned.” Harold’s grin seemed to make the years fall away. Eight years of war aged a man, and though they’d managed to escape serious injury — thanks, in no small part, to watching each other’s back — it would take some time for them both to heal from the memories.

Reggie lifted his glass in approval and drained it. “It will be a masterpiece,” he declared, rising and holding out a hand to Harold. “Another?”

Harold’s smile seemed to flicker, replaced by a momentary sadness, there and gone as if it had never been. “God, yes, thanks,” he said agreeably, handing over his snifter. The smile was back.

Nodding, Reggie went to the sideboard, deciding that he just needed to get used to his best friend wearing a beard again. With the ending of the war, life was good for both of them, even if Harold insisted upon being alone.

 

~~~

 

**Thursday, 25 October, 2012**

After ten years mostly spent living with Sherlock Holmes, very little surprised John Watson, including the sight of an extremely pregnant woman frantically knocking on the door at 221B early on a Thursday morning. Warily, John unzipped his jacket to allow him clear access to his gun. The woman hardly looked like an assassin, but experience — again, thanks to his association with Sherlock — had taught him to watch out for the ones who looked harmless. After all, he was something of an expert at looking harmless while being anything but.

“Miss?” he called. “Can I help you?” He fished his keys out of his pocket, glad he’d locked the door. He’d just gone to Speedy’s for a breakfast sandwich, having discovered that they were out of eggs again, and usually would have left the door unlocked for such a brief outing.

“Oh. Oh, thank god,” she said, wide eyes fixing him with a desperate stare. Her honey-toned skin wasn’t dark enough to hide deep shadows under her eyes. “You’re him, aren’t you? Doctor Watson?”

“Yes.” Resisting the temptation to inform her that he wasn’t an OB-GYN, John nodded and stepped past her to unlock the door. Either she was a client and in desperate need of a cup of tea and a comfortable place to sit or she was here for some nefarious purpose best kept in private. “Er, are you here for me or Sherlock?”

“Sherlock Holmes. But you — you work together, don’t you?” she asked, ducking her head in thanks as he held the door open for her. “You have a blog. I’ve read it.”

John followed, closing and locking the door. “Yes, we do. I do, that is,” he said, looking her over in the dim light of the hallway. He’d made a habit of trying to think like Sherlock, and though he knew he didn’t have the knack, he gave it a try anyway.

His doctor’s eye told him she was in good health, pregnancy coming along nicely, without any obvious complications or health issues. She wasn’t sleeping well, but he guessed that had more to do with something other than the baby — unless she was about to make some unthinkable accusation about Sherlock and her baby’s paternity. John bit his cheek to keep from laughing at the thought.

She was smartly dressed in new maternity clothes, nothing obviously bought secondhand, though it didn’t seem to have the flash of designer clothing like certain consulting detectives preferred to wear. Other than that, though, he really couldn’t tell much about her at all. Not particularly tanned, a sweet voice with a perfectly normal accent... No doubt, Sherlock would know more in a single glance.

She sighed as if relieved and fumbled to open a purse large enough to put John in mind of the backpack he’d carried into battle. His excuse had been a medical kit, water, and spare ammunition. He kept a close eye on her hands, just in case she had a weapon in there, though he was starting to doubt that she presented any sort of danger, other than the potential to prematurely go into labour.

“My husband — he’s been arrested. For murder,” she said, her voice breaking as she fumbled out a manilla envelope. “Please. Tell me you can help. He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t.”

John put on his best reassuring smile and offered her his arm to help her up the seventeen stairs to the sitting room. “Come upstairs. I’ll put up some tea and see if I can’t find Sherlock for you.”

 

~~~

 

Once, John had made a genuine effort to participate in client interviews, to watch them and see if he could pick up on the little clues that Sherlock read with such ease. Now, though, he simply watched Sherlock. Sometimes he felt as though he had some chronic medical condition that compelled him to focus his attention on Sherlock, to the near-complete exclusion of all else.

“He was arrested Tuesday morning, the day — the day after our first estate agent — They said he’d hit her on the head with a lamp and p-pushed her...” Sophie’s breath hitched and she fumbled for the box of tissues John had placed beside her teacup, prompted by long experience with clients asking for help with murder cases.

Sharp silver-blue eyes narrowed, the lines at the corners becoming more pronounced. Then Sherlock glanced sidelong at John and pressed his lips together, silencing what John knew to be a demand that she get on with her story.

John smiled in approval and looked away quickly, before Sherlock could read too much in his eyes. After ten years, this was his final deception, the only secret he’d ever managed to keep from Sherlock, who had long since made his feelings clear on the matter of emotions and relationships. As far as Sherlock was concerned, John would be forever content to be his one true friend and nothing more.

“Take your time,” John told Sophie kindly.

Sophie sniffled and dabbed at her nose, leaning back with a wince when the old couch, long since contoured to Sherlock’s frame, sagged awkwardly under her. “I’m sorry. He was supposed to be home — for the estate agent,” she explained, darting glances at them both. Her gaze settled on John, which was also nothing unusual. People looked to Sherlock for help, but they inevitably turned to John for comfort. “He walked home. I phoned, but his battery — and the police, they said he didn’t have an alibi —”

“The house is in his name?” Sherlock interrupted, focusing his laser-bright eyes back on her. He pressed his fingertips together beneath his chin — always a good sign that a case was finally catching his attention.

Sophie looked at him, wide-eyed, and nodded. “Through power of attorney, yes. It’s still Dad’s — his great-grandfather, I mean —”

“Reginald Stewart.”

Sophie’s eyes went wide. “How —”

“You’re new to Sussex, but your husband grew up there,” Sherlock continued. “You grew up in the city, most likely met Ethan at uni. Married before graduation, judging by your wedding ring, but held off on starting a family, most likely until Ethan secured a financially stable position — still in Sussex, though the opportunities are better in London. Doesn’t want to venture too far from the place where he grew up, despite the need to sell Latham Hall.

“Yes,” she breathed wonderingly. “With Reginald’s care and a baby on the way, we can’t afford to keep — Wait, how did you know it’s Latham Hall?”

“Latham Hall is the only property in your area with a grand foyer that isn’t listed with the National Trust.”

Her eyes went as wide as saucers, and right on cue, she turned to John, who smiled. “He does that,” John said, not bothering to conceal the pride in his voice.

Still awed, she looked back at Sherlock. “Will you —”

“Fine,” Sherlock interrupted, abruptly rising. “We’ll take the case. John, we’re going to Sussex tomorrow. Make the arrangements.” He nodded to their latest client, gave John a smile that made his heart skip, and swept out of the room, hopefully going to pack.

Dazed, Sophie asked, “That’s it? You’ll help? Really?”

“Really,” John promised.

 

~~~

 

“The only ‘Latham Hall’ I can find is a building at a university in Virginia,” John said between bites of noodles. He gestured with his chopsticks, asking, “Anything in the police reports?”

Sherlock hummed in discontent, dancing one chopstick between his fingers and over his knuckles, the ends a spinning blur. “You’ll be pleased to note the police in Sussex are every bit as incompetent as they are here, though significantly less well-funded.”

“Delightful. Eat your prawns,” John scolded, tapping the styrofoam box that sat neglected beside the now-empty manilla envelope.

With a little huff, Sherlock picked up the other chopstick and flipped open the box. “This level of violence is extreme. It speaks of anger. Passion.”

“People can get pretty territorial about their houses,” John said, thinking of the various painful fates that had befallen burglars at 221B over the years.

Scooping rice up with the chopsticks, Sherlock ignored John and went back to glaring at the police report. Long since accustomed to being ignored, John contented himself with the sight of Sherlock eating. He abandoned the conversation and went back to searching the web, this time looking for anything on Sophie Stewart.

For a peaceful half hour, the only sounds were the rustle of paper, the squeak of styrofoam, and the rapid click of John’s typing, which had improved dramatically over the years. _Fall of the Estate Agent,_ he thought, though as a title, it lacked a certain elegance. Besides, there was no sense thinking about posting the case until it was done. Working with Sherlock, John had learned, required a certain level of open-mindedness.

“Well?” Sherlock asked into the silence. He sat back, spine cracking like a string of fireworks, and stretched out his legs under the table. His expensive designer shoes bumped up against John’s old trainers. Neither of them moved out of the way.

Knowing what Sherlock expected, John clicked one of his previous tabs. “Twenty-second of June, three years ago, Sophie Wilson married Ethan Stewart at Latham Hall.” He turned the laptop, pushing aside the now-empty styrofoam boxes, to show a Facebook photo album. “Looks like a nice place.”

Sherlock turned sideways, moving his feet away from John’s. “Reginald Stewart, master of Latham Hall,” he said thoughtfully, tapping the image of an old man in a wheelchair posed at the front of the bridal party. Instead of a tuxedo, he wore an olive green uniform.

“World War II, isn’t that?” John asked, dredging up what little he knew of military history. His stint in the army had ended a long time ago, half a continent away.

Sherlock didn’t shrug, but only because he rarely admitted any lack of knowledge, even the unimportant kind. “No fascinating criminal history?” he asked, tapping at the touchpad to page through the photographs.

“You’re the only man on the planet who’d be cheered to discover a pretty young mother-to-be was actually an ax-murderess or serial killer,” John accused fondly.

Sherlock flashed his sly grin, nearly stopping John’s heart. “Be creative, John,” he scolded. “Smuggler, embezzler, money launderer —”

“Wouldn’t that be money laundress?” John teased.

Laughing, Sherlock went back to clicking through the photos. They were the standard assortment of wedding pictures, bride in white, groom and groomsmen in black, bridesmaids in the sort of horrid pink taffeta none of them would ever wear again. Then came the individual portraits taken inside, by a picturesque fireplace with a decorative brass screen and flowers covering the mantle.

Sherlock reviewed each one for barely a second, doubtless taking in every relevant detail with a single glance. John tried to keep up, but spotted something on one of the pictures just as Sherlock clicked to the next.

“Wait,” John said, putting a hand out. “Go back.”

Giving John a curious look, Sherlock paged back to a solo portrait of Reginald Stewart. The man had to be eighty, perhaps even ninety, but he seemed aware of his surroundings and happy, eyes bright and focused, smile genuine. His uniform was neat and sharply pressed, his medals and service ribbons all properly aligned and polished. Other than the very modern powered wheelchair, he looked entirely at ease in the old fashioned room with its great fireplace. The photo was worthy of framing, except for one blur that marred the backdrop.

“What’s that?” John asked, swiping a finger above Reginald’s left shoulder, over the strange blur. It looked almost like a person standing behind the old man, resting a hand on his shoulder.

Scowling now, Sherlock turned the laptop almost completely away from John. “I’d say a double-exposure, but this was taken with a digital camera, not processed film. Reflection, probably of the photographer,” he decided, clicking over to the next image.

“No, wait. Go back,” John protested.

Sherlock gave him a quick glare but obligingly clicked back to the previous image. “If you even _hint_ —”

“Yes, yes, at a ghost, I know,” John dismissed. “But you have to admit, it _could_ be a person, though. Here’s the head, and it looks like there’s a hand on the old man’s shoulder...”

“Or it could be the flash reacting poorly with the window glass to the left, out of the frame. Rather than assigning credit to the supernatural, let’s place the blame where it belongs, shall we: on the shoulders of the incompetent photographer.” Sherlock decisively clicked over to the next photograph, which was of Sophie and her maid-of-honour. “Most likely, he was married to the incompetent bridal planner who suggested pink taffeta.”

John laughed.

 

~~~

 

**Friday, 26 October, 2012**

The sunset bathed Latham Hall in blood red and golden flame, making John shiver. Deep shadows clawed across the front wall, and the windows all looked dark and grim. For a stately home, Latham Hall was small and compact, a foreboding rectangle of sandy brown stone trimmed with white.

They’d got a late start out of London and had arranged for rooms at a local chain hotel. Sherlock had wanted to stay at a bed and breakfast that was the site of a grisly murder in the early twenties, but John put his foot down, preferring a working hot water heater and beds he didn’t have to share with fleas. By the time the dust had settled, it was too late in the day to visit the hotel restaurant. John’s stomach was growling, and he’d been wondering if it would be rude to ask Sophie to fix him a sandwich or something, until the taxi brought them up the weedy gravel drive to Latham Hall.

Now, he wasn’t certain he wanted that sandwich after all. Something about the building played havoc with his instincts, reminding him of the burnt, abandoned buildings in Iraq. They were everywhere, and after a while, a soldier started to get bad feelings about some of them. He had that feeling now, even though he knew the worst possibility lurking in there was the chance that he might have to deliver a baby for the first time in his medical career.

“It’s like something out of an Agatha Christie novel,” he said, trying to distract himself.

“Hopefully more engaging,” Sherlock answered as he exited the cab, leaving John to pay the driver. Without hesitation, Sherlock walked up the front steps to a pair of huge, black-lacquered doors and knocked. The sound of the tarnished brass knocker echoed like thunder.

John followed, and when the taxi drove off, he could almost hear the rotors of his chopper as it took off, retreating back to friendlier territory. He had to resist the instinct to feel for the gun at the small of his back.

As John reached the top of the stairs, one of the two great doors creaked open. “Mr. Holmes. Doctor,” Sophie said, giving a nervous smile. “Thank god you’re here first. Another estate agent is coming to view the property tonight.”

“Even with your husband indisposed?” Sherlock asked as he led the way inside.

“Dad’s not doing very well, what with Ethan...” Sophie’s smile faltered. She nodded at John as he passed into a dimly-lit hallway. “I can’t — I can’t do this on my own.”

Sherlock had already swept ahead, and was now standing in a brighter patch of light. The floor was made up of squares of black and white, like a giant chessboard. Once again, the client-handling part of the work fell to John, though he didn’t mind. He was accustomed to it by now.

“Is Mr. Stewart here, then? The elder, I mean.”

Still sniffling, Sophie nodded. “In the downstairs parlour. He likes it there. We closed up most of the house, rather than installing a lift. Our bedrooms are down here as well, in the wing by the kitchen.

John very nearly asked if that was the room where the wedding photographs had been taken, but he stopped himself. She didn’t need the reminder, nor did she need to think that perfectly normal research had crossed a line into creepy stalkerish territory. Most people had misconceptions about the work he and Sherlock did.

“May I meet him?” John asked instead. “As a doctor, I mean. As you say, this can’t have been easy on him.”

“All right. That’s kind of you to offer,” she said, looking a bit relieved. “He likes visitors, though sometimes... well, his memory’s going. Sometimes, he thinks it’s back in the days after the War. This way.”

John followed her to the black-and-white floor. A glance up into the open space showed a balcony running around three sides of the room. The fourth was taken up by a grand split staircase that met at a landing in the middle of the wall.

“That’s a portrait of him,” Sophie said, pausing to point at the huge oil painting on the wall above the landing. “Ethan’s great-granddad, Reginald; his wife, Eleanor; and the best man at their wedding.”

The painting showed a seated couple — a man in the old-style uniform of an army major and a woman in a white gown, decorated with lace. Behind them stood a second man, this one with captain’s bars. His left hand rested on the seated man’s left shoulder, suddenly reminding John of the photograph. Perhaps the photographer had cleverly superimposed this portrait of the young Reginald Stewart over the photograph of him as he was now.

“Who’s the captain?” John asked curiously. He glanced at Sherlock, who now had his blacklight torch in hand, and was shining the bluish light on the floor.

Sophie glanced back at the portrait. “Oh, that’s Captain Latham.”

“As in, Latham Hall,” John prompted gently. Behind him, Sherlock let out a little huff, but since he didn’t vocalise the unspoken ‘obviously’, John let it pass.

“Yes. He died years ago, though. I think soon after Ethan’s dad was born.”

Turning away from the foyer, Sophie led John down the hallway to the left, along the front of the house, to the first door on the left. She pushed it open, softly calling, “Dad?”

“Ellie?” called a quavering voice.

Sophie gave John a sad look. “His wife,” she said softly. She stepped into the room, saying, “No, Dad. It’s Sophie. I brought someone to meet you.”

John followed her inside and glanced around quickly. There were two tall, narrow windows, arched near the top, in the wall opposite the door. The rest of the walls were decorated with bookshelves, broken only by the fireplace John had seen in the wedding pictures. The fireplace was unlit, but an electric space heater warmed the room.

Reginald Stewart was in a wheelchair by the space heater. He wore pyjamas and a dressing gown, with a blanket pulled over his lap. A utilitarian aluminium cane hung at the back of the wheelchair, an unwanted reminder of John’s bad days long ago, right after the war. The three years since the wedding photos had not been kind to him. His hair was almost completely gone now, and age spots dotted his scalp and the backs of his gnarled hands.

Sophie went right to him, pressing a kiss to his cheek and fussing with his blanket. John watched her intently, knowing Sherlock would question him later, but he saw nothing to hint that she was anything but a caring, concerned great-granddaughter-in-law.

“Dad,” she said, crouching beside the wheelchair. “This is Dr. Watson.”

“Another doctor?” he snapped, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at John. “Quacks! All of you!”

“Dad!” Sophie protested, giving John an apologetic look.

He shook his head and walked over to the wheelchair, extending a hand. “Not that kind of doctor, sir. I’m a detective.”

Reginald tipped his head back and studied John suspiciously. Then he let out a wheezy laugh and clasped John’s hand with surprising strength, though his arm trembled a bit. “Detective doctor, you say? Well, that’s all right, then! Ellie, get a couple of brandies for me and...”

“John, sir. John Watson,” he supplied, giving Sophie a warning look. The old man had to be on a veritable cocktail of medications, none of which would work well with brandy, John was certain.

“I’ll get you some tea,” Sophie said, and excused herself.

John moved one of the armchairs close so he could sit down, though not before he took off his jacket. The space heater was working at full bore, turning the room into an oven. “Sir —”

“Tea,” Reginald interrupted with a huffing sort of cough. “Sometimes, it’s like she thinks this is a field hospital. Like tea’s going to cure a bullet in the gut.”

Startled, John shook his head and tried to laugh, but it came out rusty and harsh. A long-dormant corner of his mind flashed back to Bill Murray’s threats that if John died on him, his last drink would’ve been that god-awful coffee they served at base and not a proper cup of tea — or a pint, for that matter.

Shaking his head, Reginald continued, “Are you one of Harold’s friends, then?”

Remembering the portrait in the foyer, John asked, “Harold? Harold Latham, you mean?”

“Best friend a man could ever have,” Reginald said fondly. “Been right at my side forever, it seems. Went through school together. Went through _Hell_ together,” he added gravely. “Not once did he leave me, good old Harold.”

“That’s commendable of him,” John said, feeling out of his depth. Alzheimer’s was his guess, though he wasn’t a gerontologist or neurologist. These days, he was strictly general practice, unless one counted patching up the damage Sherlock’s Work ended up inflicting on them both.

Reginald nodded, head bobbing as if it were on a spring. “Where is he?” he asked suddenly, looking around. “Not off getting drunk again, is he?”

“Did he —” John cut off, correcting himself, “Does he have a drinking problem?”

Reginald shook his head and toyed with the wedding ring that was loose on his finger. “No, not at all,” he said with a bright, false smile. “He’ll be back ’round shortly. Grab us a couple of drinks while we wait.”

Remaining firmly in his chair, John decided to get things back to the present. He wasn’t very hopeful about his chances at getting useful information out of the old man, but he had to try. “Mr. Stewart, have you seen anyone odd lurking about these past few days?”

“Mmm, no, but I’ve been in London. You’ll have to ask Harold.” Reginald dropped his voice and leaned forward. “He doesn’t go out much these days, poor chap.”

“If _you_ could try and remember,” John pressed a bit desperately, “I’d be very grateful.” He smiled encouragingly, hoping for any tidbit he could pass along to Sherlock. He certainly wasn’t going to tell Sherlock they needed to interrogate a man who was probably dead these last twenty or thirty years.

God, no. Sherlock might get it in his head to go dig up the body. John shuddered at the thought. Thanks to Sherlock, he knew precisely how much work was involved in digging up a grave, and his shoulder would have none of that nonsense — not in this kind of cold and damp.

Before Reginald could say anything, John’s mobile buzzed. He extracted it from the pocket of his jacket and saw a text message from Sherlock. Smiling, he looked back at the old man, who had fallen into a doze. Just in case he was resting his eyes, John politely muttered, “Excuse me, sir.” Then he rose as quietly as he could, folded his jacket over his arm, and went to find Sherlock. Hopefully he’d had better luck than John had.


	3. Chapter 3

**Thursday, 15 February 1946**

Reggie hurried into the family dining room, announcing his arrival with an apology: “Sorry, Harold. Eleanor won’t be joining us, so sorry.”

Harold rose from where he was seated at the small, intimate table for six. “Is something wrong, old boy? You look an absolute mess.” He didn’t pause to button his jacket as he quickly crossed to Reggie’s side, offering a hand.

The world seemed to rock violently around Reggie. His heart pounded; he hadn’t felt like this since the War, since the days when his ears still rang with the echoes of guns and mortars that had fallen silent, and his mind exulted with the realisation that he was alive. He caught Harold’s arm, laughing a bit madly, and pulled Harold into an overjoyed embrace.

“It’s Ellie!” he said, his voice ringing with laughter as he pounded Harold’s back. “She’s pregnant!”

Harold went stiff in Reggie’s arms for a moment before he thumped a hand between Reggie’s shoulderblades. “Good for you!” he praised, stepping back to catch Reggie by the shoulders. “It’s about bloody time!”

Floating on clouds, Reggie let Harold guide him to the table and sit him down at the head seat. Instead of returning to the far end, Harold sat down beside Reggie and called for the servants. “She had the doctor over today, while we were at the office,” he said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Said she’s doing absolutely fine, no problems, all that. Good Christ, I’m going to be a father!”

“I’m terribly happy for you both.” Harold patted Reggie’s arm, squeezing for a moment before he called, “Vincent! Where are —” As soon as the servant appeared in the doorway, Harold said, “Skip the wine, Vincent. Bring out the de Castelnau. We’re celebrating!”

The dinner passed in a haze of laughter and champagne, and though there were only two of them to celebrate, it was every bit as joyful as a party in the grand ballroom. He briefly regretted that Eleanor had chosen to take a tray in their room, where she could have toast and broth without having to smell the cooking from the kitchen. She’d made it to the top of the stairs before the odour of a fine roast beef had turned her stomach. The doctor had said such feelings would pass in a few weeks at most, and Reggie contented himself with the promise that he’d throw her the grandest fete ever seen at Latham Hall once the baby was born.

The de Castelnau ’34 disappeared, followed by a very good Pommery that saw them up the stairs, arm-in-arm, to their customary haunt of the trophy room. Head spinning, Reggie fell laughing into his armchair and took a glass from the tray Vincent offered.

“Last one,” Reggie told Vincent, waving his free hand.

“Nonsense! This is a celebration,” Harold protested.

“Last one, or poor Vincent here will be trying to get you into bed by himself, because I’ll be passed out on the rug right here.” Reggie gestured to the fine Turkish carpet before the hearth and then took a sip of the very excellent champagne.

“Or you’ll be right here with me,” Harold pointed out slyly, eyes bright. He finally came to sit opposite Reggie, offering him a cigar. “What kind of friend would I be if I sent you to your pregnant wife’s bed in the state you’re in?”

Reggie leaned forward and took the cigar, though the task required more than a little concentration on his part. “My best friend,” he said warmly, allowing Vincent to take the task of cutting the cigar.

Harold waved Vincent out of the room and leaned forward, American-style Zippo lighter in hand. “Always,” he promised gravely, rolling the wheel, sending bright sparks into the comfortable dimness of the room.

Reggie leaned forward and set the end of the cigar close to the flame. “Always,” he agreed, smiling into his best friend’s eyes.

 

~~~

 

**Friday, 26 October, 2012**

In thirty years, Sherlock had learned to count on two things: his own intellect and the stupidity of nearly everyone else around him. And in the last ten years — with one glaring, terrible exception — he’d learned to count on a third thing: John Watson would always be at his side.

This case again proved that the second conclusion, at least, was true. Sherlock had known that before ever leaving Baker Street. Ethan Stewart had a wife and a baby on the way, and while love could make people behave irrationally, that irrationality was almost always focussed in certain predictable ways. If Ethan had suspected the baby wasn’t his, he would’ve lashed out at the most likely candidate, or perhaps at the wife herself. If he’d wanted money, then his great-grandfather was the obvious target. If he didn’t want to sell the house, then obviously he simply had to refuse to sign the sale papers. There was no need to kill the estate agent at all.

Of course, the Sussex police were too stupid to recognise those truths. They lacked motive and actual physical evidence, so they had simply latched onto the one suspect — if one could call him a ‘suspect’ — that had no alibi.

In his police interview, Ethan had stated that he’d been upset over the sale of the house and had chosen to walk home rather than taking a taxi or public transport. Sherlock could easily verify his statement with access to the proper CCTV networks, but that would leave the bumbling locals with no suspect and an unsolved murder. The lure of presenting the actual killer’s identity was too great.

He found nothing of interest on the floor where the victim’s body had landed, so he went upstairs and to the right, passing what he knew to be the door to the servant’s hallway. He pushed open the next door, which led to the trophy room, where the first blow had been struck.

Reaching inside, Sherlock felt along the wall for the light switch, but flipping it produced no result. He still had his blacklight in hand, so he snapped it on and swept the pale blue light across the room, throwing deep shadows against the walls. Spots of white fluoresced: the fur of a hare, a monkey’s skeleton, a polar bear’s head snarling down from a plaque on the wall.

He stepped inside, remembering the trophy room in the house where he’d grown up. The room was in a state his family’s servants would never have permitted, thick with dust and the stale smell of old, untended fur. He’d learned the names of bones from his grandfather’s collection of skeletons. Dim, half-deleted recollections floated up through his memory, recitations of the skeletal differences between birds and lizards and animals, four-legged and two-legged alike.

He turned, spotting the emptiness where the lamp had been. The police report had specified a standing lamp as the murder weapon, swung with such force as to shatter the victim’s skull into bone shards. Somehow, though, she’d survived long enough to stagger out the door — and now, Sherlock stepped into the doorway, keeping his strides appropriately short, counting four steps to take him from the doorway to the balcony, where she’d gone over and fallen to her death.

Four steps. Could she have staggered four steps with her skull caved in? He’d have to see the body.

Sherlock went back to the doorway and knelt down, running a hand over the wooden floor. The sides were polished and dark, the middle a lighter stripe where a carpet runner had protected the wood from sunlight.

He went down to all fours and set the torch down, watching it carefully for movement. If the floor had a slope, momentum might explain how she’d crossed the hall with enough force to topple over. But no, the torch lay stationary, even when he gave it a little push to get it going. It wobbled but quickly stilled, light arcing at an oblique angle over the floor.

_John,_ he thought, recognising the need for John’s presence. John might not always provide useful knowledge or insight, but inevitably, his questions were all Sherlock needed to push his thoughts along the path to the answer.

He  quickly sent a text — _Need you upstairs at once. SH_ — and then sat down, leaning back against the wall, to wait for his inspiration to join him upstairs.

 

~~~

 

As soon as John rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, he sighed and said, “There’s a perfectly good bench not two feet to your right, Sherlock.” To emphasise his point, he set his coat down on the bench as he walked by it.

Ten years ago, he would have assumed injury; Sherlock was, at first glance, too well-dressed and fussy about personal hygiene to sprawl on the floor like that. Five years ago, when Sherlock had returned after he’d faked his death, the sight would have given John chest pains. He’d actually been dragged to A&E twice with shortness of breath after Sherlock’s normal thoughtlessness had given him a scare. Now, he just recognised it as a sign of Sherlock being himself.

He walked over to Sherlock, who looked up to meet John’s eyes, though he didn’t bother to stand. “Are we already bored with the case?” John asked, amused.

“Sit down,” Sherlock invited, disdaining such mortal trivialities as furniture.

“If this is some attempt to scare me with spiders or something, it won’t work. You haven’t seen bugs until you’ve been to the desert, you know.” John lowered himself to the floor, joints creaking a bit, though not as much as they might have done in another man his age.

“How does a woman go from the trophy room” — Sherlock pointed back to the open doorway on his other side — “across this hall and over a waist-high railing with her skull caved in?”

“She doesn’t,” John answered. “Don’t get me wrong — I’ve seen plenty of walking dead in my time, but a —”

“Plenty of _what?_ ”

John paused, meeting Sherlock’s wide-eyed stare in surprise. He reviewed what he’d said and then laughed, shaking his head. “No, not like zombies. That’s —”

“Obviously not,” Sherlock said acidly. “Explain —”

“Getting to that,” John interrupted. “It’s when someone would take an injury, only they’d still be on their feet from adrenaline or something. Sometimes, if the traumatic shock of an injury isn’t immediately fatal for whatever reason, someone could live for hours before just keeling over to, I don’t know, internal bleeding or blood poisoning or something.”

“That’s a torso injury,” Sherlock protested. “Or a small-calibre bullet to the brain, perhaps one that follows the interior curve of the skull.”

“Which can be survivable,” John agreed. “But in _this_ case, if the police report was at all accurate” — he ignored Sherlock’s derisive snort — “then there’s no possible way our victim could’ve made it even a single step without outside help.”

With an irritated huff, Sherlock rose, gracefully uncoiling his long body like a cat stretching. He left the torch on the floor and reached down to haul John to his feet by one arm. “Here,” Sherlock said, pulling John through the nearby open doorway.

John’s heart gave a startled thump and adrenaline hit his system as he saw sharp teeth and looming shadows. He pushed Sherlock aside and reached back for his SIG before he recognised an immense, taxidermied bear. “Christ,” he muttered, glaring at Sherlock for not warning him.

The room was too dark for John to see Sherlock’s expression, but he heard the amusement clearly enough when Sherlock said, “Trophy room, John. Hunting was a common enough pastime in the early half of the previous century.”

“Yes, thank you,” John snapped. “This was where she was assaulted?”

Sherlock took hold of John’s shoulders, positioning him just inside the doorway. “She entered the room here. The blow was to the left temple.” Sherlock’s fingers traced a line from John’s cheek up over his temple to the crown of his skull. “Most likely the weighted base of the lamp — we’ll know more when we can examine the evidence.”

John nodded, stepping back. “So she falls here,” he said, looking back down at the hardwood floor. “Was there a carpet here?”

“But she _doesn’t_ fall,” Sherlock corrected, grabbing John’s shoulders again. He spun John around and pushed, making him stumble forward, into the hallway. “She makes it all the way here, still on her feet, and —”

“Impossible,” John said immediately, stopping two feet away from the railing and hating himself for it. He’d never been afraid of heights until that day eight years ago, when he’d watched Sherlock step off the roof at Bart’s, and even though Sherlock had come back, John’s irrational phobia had cemented itself into his brain over the three years he’d been gone.

“Precisely!” Sherlock went past John and leaned over the balcony.

Without thinking, John caught the back of his long coat, fist clenching in the heavy wool. It was the same coat, the coat that had been stained with blood, wrapped around a broken body that wasn’t broken at all. Through vicious threats, John had managed to take possession of the coat without having to steal it from the Scotland Yard evidence locker. He’d had it dry cleaned, and it had lost its shape from being hung in the hallway at 221B, untouched for three years save for the layer of dust.

When Sherlock had come back — when they’d both come back from their separate, personal hells — when they’d finally finished with the screaming and arguing and tears, Sherlock had put on that coat as if their three years apart had never happened, and then they’d gone for dinner. That had been the moment when John had realized just how much he loved Sherlock, and how impossible that love would always be.

“So how, John?” Sherlock asked, stepping back from the balcony. His back momentarily pressed against John’s fist.

Forcing himself to exhale, John pried his fingers away from Sherlock’s coat and shook his head. “No idea.”

Silently, Sherlock nodded. Then he turned on his heel, stepped into the trophy room, and slammed the door.

John’s brows shot up, and he waited for a moment, expecting Sherlock to emerge at any time. No light came through the substantial gap between the door and floor. John gave it a full minute before concluding that Sherlock was just standing there in the darkness, unmoving. Possibly he was trying to get into the head of the killer. Or he was napping on his feet.

Shaking his head at Sherlock’s oddities, John leaned over to pick up the blacklight torch, when an odd flash of green caught his eye. Curious, he scooted closer to where Sherlock had been sitting, leaning closer. The spot of green was on the polished floor, a nacreous glow brought out by the blue-white light of the torch.

John’s first thought was luminol, but the spot was all wrong. Luminol’s glow was blue, not green, and why would the police have bothered? Luminol was damned expensive, and as far as John was aware, no one had made any attempt to clean up the scene until after the investigation had concluded.

He looked more closely, trying to determine what the shape was. The effect was an odd one, like a magician’s illusion. The pale shape seemed to hover above the floor, suspended perhaps by a century or more of polish buildup. Curious, John crawled a step closer and picked up the torch, freezing as the shape seemed to disappear.

Slowly, he backed up to where he had been. His eyes traced over the floor, fruitlessly searching for the flash of green. Thinking it might be some sort of refraction in the floor polish, he set the torch down, and the shape appeared again.

This was how Sherlock felt, he knew. Excitement blazed through John. He reached out for the torch, and kept his eyes on the shape as he lifted the torch. The image shifted, dancing and disappearing and reappearing an inch over, then back to where it had been, before it finally disappeared when the angle of the torchlight changed to about forty-five degrees.

Grinning now, John lowered the torch, and the shapes came back, flickering in quick succession as the angle of the light changed. Everything disappeared again when he pointed the blacklight directly at them.

He was tempted to call Sherlock, but he was doing... whatever it was one did in a dark trophy room where a woman had been murdered. Besides, _he_ had discovered this. Best to investigate fully and see if maybe he could win a point or two, before Sherlock claimed the whole prize for himself.

Besides, this probably wasn’t involved at all. The green spot had to be some imprint left in the layers of polish, perhaps deposited over time. Still, it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do than lurk outside the door and ensure that some mad estate-agent-murderer didn’t leap out of the shadows to hit Sherlock with a lamp. He took out his notebook and a pen and began to sketch the first image — the one that was visible with the torch on the floor, casting its light directly across the shape.

In slow increments, he raised the torch and sketched each spot that appeared, never moving his head, always trying to accurately capture the distance between the shapes. By the time he was finished, his eyes ached from the strain, and only then did it occur to him that he would’ve had an easier time of it if he’d thought to turn off the chandelier that filled the upper reaches of the grand foyer. Too late for it now. He had paracetamol back at the hotel.

He sat back, spine aching from his contorted position, and looked at the sketch he’d made. It reminded him of a boot tread, but didn’t have the shape of the toe or heel, which was odd. It was more like the print in the middle of the boot, something that should have been impossible without a manufacturing defect. After all these years with Sherlock, he’d learned something about reading tracks — how to tell when a suspect was running, walking backwards, carrying a weight, that sort of thing.

He was still looking at the sketch when the door burst open. Sherlock stepped out — stepped _directly_ onto the spot where John had found the bootprint, in fact — and then took another stride out of the doorway.

“Sherlock. Come look at this,” John said.

Stopping in mid-step, Sherlock looked back and then down, brows rising as though he were surprised to find John on the floor. “What —”

“I think the killer left a footprint,” John interrupted, beckoning Sherlock down.

“Really?” Sherlock grinned and dropped to the floor with feline grace. His hand dipped into his jacket, retrieving his magnifier. “Where?”

“You can only see it at a funny angle. It’s like he stepped in luminol or something.”

“Our killer or one of the so-called detectives?” Sherlock asked sceptically.

Oh, damn. That hadn’t occurred to John. “Well, _someone_ stepped in the exact same spot you did just now,” he said, bracing himself against Sherlock’s scorn.

Sherlock huffed in irritation and leaned down. “Where?”

John put a hand on his shoulder, trying to get him positioned at just the right angle. “Look here,” he said, pointing to the spot where he’d seen the first bit of green. “It’s sort of... _in_ the polish. Maybe from the killer carrying the dead woman’s body?”

Sherlock swept a hand over the polished floor. “No physical imprint. I don’t see anything, John.”

“Try changing the angle of the torch. It was almost like the floor’s a prism, reflecting back different light at different angles.”

“Refracting,” Sherlock corrected, though he obediently picked up the torch and let John guide him through the angles that John had found most revealing. Not once did he seem to notice anything at all.

Frowning, John asked, “Nothing? You really can’t see anything?”

“I _see_ a great deal. There’s just nothing of interest,” Sherlock said, giving John an odd look.

Irritated now, John put the torch on the floor and leaned down, his back aching as it fell into an all-too-familiar curve. “Look, it’s right —”

He cut off, shifting the torch, watching the blue-white light glow cleanly over nothing but polish and scuffmarks.

“There’s nothing there,” Sherlock told him, an edge of irritation entering his tone.

“I didn’t imagine it,” John snapped defensively. He tossed down his notebook and said, “That’s exactly what I saw. A partial boot-print.”

Sherlock looked at the notebook, lips pressing together as his eyes raked over the very detailed sketch. He didn’t immediately dismiss it; he looked from the notebook to the floor and back, actually considering the sketch. “This is exactly what you saw?”

“In a sort of glowy green, yes, but only when the torch was at the right angle. And not all at once, either. It was as if I’d see one bit, and then it would disappear and I’d catch another, as I moved the torch,” John explained, though as he spoke, he realised just how ridiculous he sounded.

Had anyone else given Sherlock that sort of speech, the best they could hope for would be a single, sharp cut of that razor-tongue, followed by impatient dismissal. Sherlock, though, gave John a long, steady look as he sat upright. “It’s called pareidolia. It’s a psychological tendency to take meaningless shapes and translate them into some significant image or message — like children seeing shapes in clouds or smoke.”

John bit back his immediate denial. He _knew_ what he’d seen, and he didn’t need Sherlock being a condescending bastard about it, even if he was covering it up with intellectual prattle. As calmly as he could, he asked, “So I _wanted_ to see a boot print on the floor?”

“It makes perfect sense, actually,” Sherlock said, rising to his feet. He extended a hand to John, helping him up. “You want to help. I appreciate that.”

From anyone else, those short, simple sentences would have cut like knives, digging deeper into John’s already-wounded pride. Oh, they were meant to sound encouraging and grateful, but that was only on the surface — polite, meaningless words that translated to ‘You’re an idiot, so shut up and let me do all the thinking from here on out.’

But Sherlock _wasn’t_ polite. Unless he was being a manipulative bastard, he was honest to a fault, and right now, John knew Sherlock wasn’t trying to manipulate him. He actually meant what he’d said. He _did_ appreciate John’s help, though he so rarely said anything to acknowledge John’s contribution to the Work and his willingness to follow Sherlock wherever he led.

John took the offered hand and rose, letting the feel of long fingers and soft skin imprint on his flesh for a moment — just a moment — before he let go.

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right,” he said, bending down to pick up the notebook and pen.

Sherlock also reached for them, freezing as their hands brushed again. “John —”

Behind them, the trophy room door slammed shut so violently that John’s rational brain shut down under the conflicting emotions and adrenaline-fuelled memories. He twisted around, putting himself between Sherlock and the door, and had his gun out and levelled at...

Nothing.

Gently, Sherlock touched John’s left arm, pushing down with his fingertips. “Nothing to worry about, John,” he said very quietly. “Common enough in old houses.”

John exhaled, trying to force out the tension singing along his nerves. Embarrassed, he holstered the SIG and stepped away from Sherlock. “Sorry. Something about this place... bothers me. It feels _wrong_.”

“That’s because we have a murderer on the loose,” Sherlock said, his eyes alight. “Think, John. Head wounds bleed profusely —”

“They didn’t find any trace of blood on Ethan Stewart,” John interrupted. “No bloody clothing, either.”

“Precisely,” Sherlock agreed. “So how does our victim get from here all the way to there? She’s concussed, most likely unconscious, possibly even dead by this point. How does she end up on the floor of the foyer? She’s carried, of course. But not by Stewart.”

“Right. But the wife, Sophie, said no one else was in the house.”

“Servants’ halls, John. A secondary set of narrow passages and stairways spread through the house where the movement of the servants wouldn’t disturb the residents and their guests.”

John couldn’t help but grin at Sherlock’s enthusiasm. Crossing his arms, he put on a decidedly casual air and said, “Stately country home, mysterious murder, secret passages... Which part of Agatha Christie’s novels did you dislike again?”

 

~~~~

 

“She was dead before she hit the ground,” John said as soon as he saw the body. There was no question that the deep indentation across the left temple — just as they both had predicted — had been fatal. “The force of the blow...” Frowning, he leaned in closer, cautiously using one gloved finger to move a lock of the dead woman’s hair aside. “The strength to do this must have been incredible.”

“A standing lamp... But the fragility of the... And the accuracy?” Sherlock asked.

Long since accustomed to Sherlock’s habit of talking to thin air, John continued with his examination of the body. Technically, they needed either permission from the deceased woman’s next-of-kin, a court order, or authorisation from the investigating detective in charge of the case, but the staff at the morgue had been bowled over by Sherlock sweeping into their midst. John wondered how long it would be before one of them unwisely got up the courage to ask for an autograph.

As Sherlock paced and muttered, John looked back down at the body. This wasn’t a case of a mysterious cause of death — some exotic poison or attempt to hide a murder. He felt helpless, doubly so after the fiasco with the bootprint and the... whatever Sherlock had called it.

Besides, he was _certain_ he’d seen something. Why would he imagine a bootprint with enough detail that he could actually sketch it out?

Maybe the luminescence really _had_ been there, only it had faded before Sherlock saw it, like water evaporating or footprints in snow melting into invisibility.

“Sherlock, do you mind if I check something?”

“Hm? No,” Sherlock said, still distracted with his own thoughts. He allowed John to herd him out of the morgue and made no sign of being aware of John pickpocketing him for the blacklight torch. There was a chance he might wander off without John, but at this late hour, John wanted to get done with the exam, go back to the hotel, and go to sleep.

Besides, he’d probably find nothing.

John reached out and turned off the overhead lights as he switched on the torch. Light glowed violently blue-white, highlighting a modern artist’s spatter-painting of biological matter not properly rinsed off the floors, tables, walls, and, in one disturbing corner, the ceiling.

“Christ, this place could use a good bleaching. Or burning,” John muttered, avoiding the worst of the splatter remnants as he made his way back to the woman’s corpse.

At first, his findings were just as he predicted: nothing. But then, as he was examining the head wound, trying to cover all the angles at once, green-flash caught his eye. Curious, he crouched down and moved the torch more slowly, playing the light over the back of the woman’s neck.

There it was, a haze of green, visible only when the blacklight was at a sharply oblique angle to her flesh.

“A hand,” John said softly, awkwardly switching the torch to his right hand so he could cup the back of the dead woman’s neck with his gloved left hand. The faint green glow was slightly larger than his own hand — most likely a man’s, though a large woman’s hand was another possibility.

A powder, he thought. Some sort of residue. Maybe mold or spores. Weren’t there some mushrooms that glowed in the dark?

He was tempted to call Sherlock back in, but a nagging little fear in the back of his mind urged him to stay quiet. What if he was seeing things? What if he’d somehow caused the handprint by handling the body? Somewhat hesitantly, he leaned in and sniffed, thinking that any chemical or organic residue might have an odour he could identify, but all he could smell was the sterile, sharp odour of cleaning chemicals.

He stepped back and aimed the torch at the nape of the dead woman’s neck. He’d have to call in Sherlock, and then notify the forensics team. This was evidence —

It was _gone_.

John dropped to a crouch, moving the torch as slowly as he could, trying to find just the right angle between his eyes, the dead woman, and the torch, but whatever had been there was no longer present. Had he destroyed evidence? He aimed the torch at his gloved left hand, but there was no trace of anything unusual there. He even went so far as to switch hands and compare his left glove with the right, only to find no difference.

One more time, he checked the dead woman’s neck.

Nothing.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath, telling himself he must have imagined it, just like Sherlock had said of the boot print. Quietly, he left the morgue, pausing only to flip the lights back on. He really did want to help, but something about this case had him wrong-footed. Really, he hadn’t felt this lost since their earliest cases together.

Christ, he hoped this didn’t go the way the Pink Lady’s case had gone. He really didn’t want to shoot anyone — though, as always, if it came down to a choice between Sherlock and anyone else, there really was no choice at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sunday, 3 March, 1946**

Eleanor was a strong, healthy girl, and her convalescence lasted for no more than a week after the doctor’s diagnosis. Her skin took on a radiant glow, and she spent more time at the piano than ever, filling Latham Hall with beautiful song, much to Reggie’s delight.

Harold, though, was another matter, becoming moody and withdrawn, as tended to happen to him sometimes. Reggie put the blame for those dark moods squarely upon his desire to remain a lifelong bachelor. Perhaps things would have been different if Harold had been the type to frequent pubs or low houses or even seduce the chambermaids, but his behavior was utterly beyond reproach.

Sunday the third was one of those rare March days that held the promise of Spring’s sunshine and warmth to come. After driving back from church, Harold and Reggie settled themselves on the patio to play host to some friends while Eleanor coaxed the ladies into playing croquet. After seeing to everyone’s drinks and cigarettes, Reggie and Harold withdrew to lean against the patio railing, where Reggie’s eyes were drawn, as always, to Eleanor.

Then Harold shifted, turning his back on the ladies, and tipped his head to regard the façade  of Latham Hall looming over them. “I’m leaving.”

Startled, Reggie turned to study Harold’s profile. “What?”

“I’m going to India. I’ve arranged to hire a guide. Thought I’d do a bit of hunting.”

With one hand, Reggie gripped the railing, feeling the world shift underfoot. He took a deep drag off his cigarette, shaking his head. This was unthinkable. He couldn’t imagine life at Latham Hall without Harold there. “You can’t!”

Harold finally turned and gave Reggie a startlingly cold glare. Then it was gone, swept away under a tide of sympathy that softened his hawkish features. A faint smile shifted the lay of Harold’s neat brown beard. “It’s only for a few months.”

“But... the baby —”

“I’ll be back in time,” Harold promised, laying a hand on Reggie’s shoulder. “Call it... I don’t know. Call it a remnant of the War, Reggie. I need to get back out into the world.”

Reggie covered Harold’s hand with his own. Smoke rose up in a curl between them, driving away the scent of grass and sunshine. Even the sound of soft feminine laughter seemed to fade away, until there was nothing but the two of them, best friends freshly wounded by the anticipation of grief at their separation.

Quietly, Harold suggested, “You could come with me, you know.”

For one moment, Reggie considered saying yes, remembering the terrible exhilaration of going off to War beside Harold. They’d taken their first step onto foreign soil together, and together, they’d stepped off onto the boat that had returned them to England. All of their adventures had been shared.

Guilt twisted through Reggie as he thought of Eleanor. Even his momentary impulse to leave with Harold felt like a betrayal of his wedding vows. All the thoughts of his responsibilities came crashing down around him. Harold had his modest wealth tucked away, enough to keep him comfortably in an idle life, but Reggie was landed only by Harold’s grace and generosity. He had a job, a company, responsibilities that couldn’t last if he took off on a whim, even for just a month or two.

“I can’t,” he said sadly.

Harold’s eyes closed for a moment, just a moment, but it was too long to be a simple blink against the smoke weaving between them. “I know.” He squeezed Reggie’s shoulder and slipped his hand out from under Reggie’s. Turning back to face the house, he finished his drink in a hard swallow and said, “I’m off, then.”

Shocked and dismayed, Reggie exclaimed, “What? Now?”

“The ship leaves Southampton first thing tomorrow,” Harold said as he put his glass down on the railing. “I’ve time for one last check of my bags. The car should be waiting by now.”

“God, Harold, I didn’t —”

Harold laughed, the sound slightly brittle and forced. “I’ll be back, old boy. Give my regards to your wife and the others, will you? I can’t abide a prolonged farewell.”

Reggie pulled Harold into a tight embrace, whispering fiercely, “Don’t you dare get yourself killed over there.”

“I will always come back to you,” Harold whispered just as intently. “By God, I swear it.”

Then he was gone, slipping back into the Hall through a servant’s doorway to avoid the crowd of their friends. Reggie watched, trying to find his footing around the new emptiness inside him, until a voice reached into that lonely darkness and pulled him back. “Reggie, darling?”

He wasn’t alone. He smiled and took a breath, shaking off his black mood. He turned to wave at his beautiful wife and their unborn child, reminding himself that he wasn’t alone at all.

 

~~~

 

**Friday, 26 October 2012**

The taxi’s suspension groaned as the driver steered around the worst of the potholes. Had they been in London, Sherlock would have known if they were taking the most efficient route back to the hotel, but here, he’d have to depend on his mobile’s GPS for that, and he was busy mentally reexamining the insufficient facts in this case. When his mobile rang, he huffed in irritation and shoved it at John. Let him deal with _people_. Sherlock needed facts, and they weren’t adding up.

John took the mobile smoothly, answering, “Hello?” followed by, “No, it’s Dr. Watson.” His voice should have been intrusive, but it was surprisingly soothing for a voice that was pleasant but unremarkable on the surface. But only on the surface. Sherlock had heard that voice in every circumstance imaginable, from the laugh of an adrenaline-high sensation-junkie to the muffled sobs of nightmares. The breath of fear tainting his voice during that terrible lie of a phone call when Sherlock had destroyed them both to save them both.

Nothing extraordinary about John’s voice, except that Sherlock had learned to hear _more_. Everything about John was like that. He was _more_ — more than just awful taste in clothing and a pleasant smile and the half-hearted attempts at living a normal life. Dig deeper beneath the doctor and there was the soldier, the man who would kill without hesitation, but only when it was morally right and proper in a way only he could judge. Beneath that lived a core of loyalty that was more than the sum of the oaths he’d sworn as a soldier and doctor. For three years, he’d believed in Sherlock, accepting everything as truth except for a deathbed confession that he’d known in his heart had been a lie.

In a world where constants were labelled in sweeping, cosmic terms — gravity and orbits and the tattered remnants of trivial science Sherlock had refused to delete since Moriarty’s game — John was the only constant that truly mattered. John was Sherlock’s _always_.

“Right,” John said, offering Sherlock the mobile. He leaned forward to address the taxi driver, saying, “Latham Hall, hurry.”

Excitement prickled up and down Sherlock’s spine, and he hoped it wasn’t something as trivial as the old master of the hall, Reginald Stewart, dropping dead of a heart attack. “John?”

“There’s been another death,” John said gravely. “They’re investigating it as a suicide.”

And if he didn’t smile openly at the way Sherlock’s eyes lit up, the smile was still there, deep in his eyes and the twitch at one corner of his mouth.

 

~~~

 

“My god,” John said softly as he looked at the hanging body. The heels were only a few inches off the floor; had the man been any taller, he would’ve broken his legs and not his neck. Or had he broken his neck at all?

The local police had already cleared John and Sherlock to examine the scene, so he didn’t hesitate to approach, taking everything in small increments. Sherlock was already there, a black raven circling the corpse as though looking for the best place to start pecking at tender bits of flesh. John shivered at the gruesome turn of his thoughts and followed the line of the corpse up, up to the golden cord that was the instrument of death. The cord looked to have been taken from a set of heavy draperies. It stretched up to the stone balustrade, where the knot had slid all the way down the thin part of one of the decorative stone uprights. It was a thick, twisted thing tied in a messy knot at the nape of the neck, rather than under the ear. No, the neck wouldn’t be broken. This man had asphyxiated slowly and horribly.

“How did he manage to _not_ botch this?” John mused to Sherlock.

With a dramatic spin, Sherlock grabbed hold of his shoulders and exclaimed, “Precisely! If this was a suicide, he did us all a favour, removing himself from the genetic makeup of the human race.”

“Murder, then?”

Sherlock huffed and pointed with a gloved finger an inch away from the knot at the back of the hanged man’s neck. “The cord’s two inches thick. This isn’t so much a knot as it is a tangle. If you were going to hang someone by surprise, you’d have a slip knot prepared — a noose ready to tighten about your victim’s neck. Catch the victim” — he held out his hands, miming slipping a noose around John’s neck — “tighten the knot” — his hands came together in fists, slipping one up snug against the side of John’s throat — “and push over the balcony. _After_ measuring the fall to ensure the best chance of fatality. Only a chance, mind.”

“What?”

“Our victim is thin, eleven and a half, twelve stone at most. The ideal drop would be just over six feet to ensure a proper hangman’s fracture — not that we have a knot designed to do anything more than choke the victim to death,” Sherlock added. “So, death by asphyxiation, Doctor?”

John felt grimly better on a scientific footing. He nodded, circling the body, taking in the victim’s colouring. “At first glance, yes. This happened some time ago.”

One of the locals came forward at that, hesitantly offering, “He was found only forty minutes ago, sir, but Mrs. Stewart said she was settling Old Mr. Stewart into bed. He’s got one of those breathing machines — can hardly hear a thing over it when the fan’s running.”

“Sleep apnea,” John guessed in an aside to Sherlock.

“Don’t move the body yet,” Sherlock said, and spun on one heel, going quickly for the stairs. John watched worriedly as Sherlock turned right at the landing. Only then did John orient himself and recognise that this body had fallen in almost _exactly_ the same spot as the other apparently had, right outside the trophy room door.

Irrational fear clenched an icy fist in his chest. The local officer was still talking, but John bolted after Sherlock, taking the stairs two at a time, calling, “Sherlock!” so loudly that his voice echoed, momentarily silencing the murmur of conversation among the officers below.

Just before the trophy room door, Sherlock stopped and looked back, puzzled. Silently scolding himself, John put on a fake smile and said, “It’s fine. Go on.” But he stayed close, and tried not to tear himself apart guarding Sherlock from both the trophy room door and the fatal fall that had already been a part of two deaths.

 

~~~

 

Improvised hangman’s rope. A lamp used to bludgeon. What kind of serial killer _didn’t_ carry the tools of his trade? Oh, it wasn’t impossible to find a deadly use for almost anything at hand — Sherlock had, more than once, tested his own imagination in just that way, refusing to leave a room until he’d found a way to use every single item as a murder weapon — but to actually execute a series of targeted murders that way struck him as sloppy. Unprofessional.

He dropped to all fours and got close to the rope. It was one of the curtain tie-backs from the trophy room, a decorative twist of thick cord, the individual ropes wrapped in fine threads the colour of burnished gold to give it a satin finish. Such cords were a staple of period decor, but useful for little else. They’d certainly proven useless during Sherlock’s childhood, when he’d tried to tie enough of them together to fashion a climbing rope. He’d ended up using ripped bedsheets instead, and incurring the wrath of the upstairs maid.

There was a thought. Why hadn’t the killer simply used torn curtains?

Flicking on the blacklight torch, Sherlock went for the trophy room and almost crashed into John, who stepped right into his path. Startled, Sherlock just stared down as he said, “Sorry,” and got out of the way, though not before he shot a wary glance at the trophy room door.

“John...” Sherlock followed his gaze, remembering how John had reacted earlier, when the door had slammed shut. John didn’t draw his weapon without cause. He preferred, in fact, to _not_ draw when there was any possibility that an innocent might be harmed, even when deadly force was definitely the preferable alternative.

For all of Sherlock’s experience on the London streets, he wasn’t a soldier. John’s experiences in Iraq had transformed him through some alchemical process Sherlock could never replicate. Sherlock had logic and facts and conclusions, but John had _instincts_.

So Sherlock allowed John to lead the way into the trophy room, and he stayed close to John’s side as he went to examine the fabric of the curtains. It was thick, aged velvet, the pile brittle when crushed between thumb and forefinger. It would tear easily, though perhaps too easily. Natural fibres, especially those exposed to sunlight, degraded quickly. It wouldn’t hold a man’s weight, especially not under the sudden application of force at full extension during a hanging.

“If you were going to kill someone —”

“The gun cabinet,” John said without hesitation.

Sherlock looked at him, and then to the gun cabinet in the corner, half-hidden behind the standing black-furred bear. “Stupid!” he barked at himself, going right for the tall, narrow cabinet. He’d _seen_ it, but he hadn’t _observed_. He hadn’t acknowledged its presence, nor had he thought of it in terms of how best to murder two estate agents.

He took hold of the handle and rattled it against the lock, feeling the simple mechanism. He gave it a hard twist and lifted, and the lock disengaged with a sharp click. “Why not just shoot them?” he asked, throwing the door open —

“Because it’s empty,” John said with a sigh, pressing against Sherlock’s arm as he leaned in to take a look.

Now even angrier at himself, Sherlock slammed the cabinet door and looked around. He caught John by the shoulders and turned him around to face the room. The torch in Sherlock’s right hand sent blue-white light dancing over the grotesque, moldering trophies on shelves and plaques, causing fangs and glass eyes to flash brightly in the darkness.

“Think, John. Think! You don’t have your gun. How do you kill someone?”

“Fireplace tools,” John said at once. “Bash them in the head with just about anything. Break off a claw or fang, and you have a cutting weapon. Go for the throat or the eye. Snap a bone —”

“Exactly,” Sherlock interrupted. He let go and brushed past John, turning to face him. “Why an unwieldy curtain rope?”

“Showmanship?” John proposed. “Why throw the first victim over the railing?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. Out. Away from the trophy room. The act of throwing was one of violent rejection. Denial.

He left, opening his senses, breathing deeply through his nose, watching the shift of light as he stepped from the dark trophy room into the grand foyer, where the police were still milling about like sheep.

 _Rejection,_ he thought, picturing the strain of muscles required to propel not one but two bodies over the railing. The inhale, the strain of lifting weight. The exhale as the weight is released. Relief. The sound of the body impacting below. The choking man swinging at the end of a rope too thick and poorly placed to break his neck.

He leaned over the balustrade, transposing a mental image of the first death over the visible reality of the second body, but his thoughts scattered like startled birds when John stepped up beside him, clutching the railing so tightly that his knuckles went white. His shoulder pressed against Sherlock’s arm and his breathing had gone short.

Immediately, Sherlock realised what he’d done. John’s fear of heights still caught Sherlock by surprise sometimes because it manifested itself in such fractured ways. John would join Sherlock at a ledge or railing or balcony, but only reluctantly, his fear well-hidden from everyone who wasn’t Sherlock, but John never hesitated to follow Sherlock, even if it meant leaping over a balcony or from one rooftop to another, in the heat of a chase.

The fear wasn’t that John would be harmed by a fall, but that Sherlock would be lost again, this time forever. Sherlock had figured that much out his first week back, but he still had trouble remembering to mind his surroundings when he was caught up in his Work. Worse, if Sherlock openly avoided high places, John would snap out irrationally, ordering him to get on with whatever he’d wanted to do.

Slowly, perhaps even unconsciously, John’s left hand unclenched from the railing and moved to Sherlock’s shoulder.

Sherlock considered the scene before him. “The killer wanted to be rid of them. The first victim died in the room behind us, but he threw the body over. It’s symbolic.”

“And the second obviously fits that,” John agreed.

He was conscious of the weight of John’s hand resting gently on his shoulder, barely heavy enough to deform fabric warped by how the coat had been hung for three years on a narrow hanger rather than a properly shaped wooden one. Sherlock should have bought a new coat long ago, but the Belstaff was a classic, never out of style, and it was still warm and comfortable. He told himself his decision had nothing to do with the fact that the coat had, by virtue of hanging at the flat for his three-year-absence, spent more time with John than its wearer had done.

Sherlock stayed at the railing for only a few more seconds before he pushed back and turned away, though he kept watch over one shoulder, noting how John took a long step back and relaxed almost at once.

“So, we’re back to emotions. A relative? Or a servant who’s been here forever, and is looking at being forced to retire?”

Sherlock looked back at John, his smile proud. The servant angle was a new one — inaccurate, given the state of the Stewart family’s finances, but a good guess. John had progressed so far beyond the dull, ordinary norm of society over their years of association.

So much for the idiots who had asserted that Sherlock would destroy John. He’d _improved_ John, teaching him how to think and reason and observe.

“A servant would have an emotional attachment, yes, but not enough to kill without more incentive,” Sherlock told him.

“A relative, then,” John concluded, watching Sherlock intently. At Sherlock’s nod, he continued, “A relative with financial incentive — a share of the profits. One who’d know how to sneak in and out of the house without being caught.”

When Sherlock remained silent, John’s grin became bright and genuine, most likely in a way that would embarrass him once he recalled the grim reality of a dead man hanging from the baluster only a few feet away. For now, though, Sherlock saw nothing but pleasure in John’s expression at the fact that Sherlock had added nothing at all to his conclusion.

It was, given the evidence, perfect and complete. Nothing more needed to be said.

 

~~~

 

“There’s no possible way she could have done it,” Sherlock snapped into the mobile, irritated at the way all police departments seemed to put their finest idiots in charge of making decisions. “The strain of lifting a body, even of a short, slender man, would probably have set her into labour. Now stop arresting my witnesses, release Ethan Stewart from custody, and kindly allow me to do _your_ job properly,” he said, disconnecting the call with a hard stab of his thumb.

He threw the mobile onto the foot of the bed and began to pace from one side of his hotel room to the other, feeling trapped. Caged, both in this hateful, generic room and in his head. The murders had been committed by a relative. That _had_ to be the case, because the only other option was a random serial killer targeting estate agents who went anywhere near the trophy room at Latham Hall, which was ridiculous.

He’d spent three hours on his laptop, researching every genealogy database he could find, only to come to the conclusion that there were far too many Stewarts in England and that none of them were directly related to Reginald or Ethan or any of the generations in between. Reginald had sired two children, and his son had sired a single male heir, who in turn had sired only Ethan. No siblings. No cousins, save by marriage. He’d even gone so far as to go back to Sophie’s Facebook page to search for relatives in the wedding pictures, but there were none on Ethan’s side save Reginald Stewart.

Abandoning his mobile before any more stupid texts or calls came in, he left his room and went down to the lobby, thinking he should find a cigarette or an all-night chemist’s for nicotine patches. He needed something — anything — to push his brain in a new direction, to help his thoughts bridge new synaptic connections.

 _John,_ he thought as the lift doors opened at the lobby. He stabbed a finger at the lift controls, stepping back to watch the display impatiently as the doors closed and the lift ascended back to their floor. John was better than nicotine, and even if he was sleeping, he’d prefer to be awakened than to discover Sherlock had been smoking.

Back upstairs, he went to John’s door and knocked. Next time, they should just get connecting rooms and save Sherlock the trouble of having to knock at all.

It took less than fifteen seconds for John to open the door, after disengaging both the deadbolt and the security bar. His hair was mussed and he wore only boxers, but his eyes were alert, and Sherlock was certain he had his gun concealed behind the door.

“What’s wrong?” he asked sharply.

Sherlock pushed the door open and went into John’s room. Just being here seemed to settle his thoughts into a less chaotic pattern. “There are no relatives.”

After closing and locking the door, John went back into the main room and turned on a corner light. “We’re having this discussion at two in the morning —”

“Then who? Who has an emotional stake in the matter, one deep enough to warrant murdering not one but two strangers?” Sherlock interrupted.

“I don’t have to be awake for this, do I?” John asked as he sat down on the edge of his bed, watching Sherlock pace.

“The motive is clear — someone doesn’t want the house sold, someone who’s _not_ one of the Stewarts. The husband was in jail for the second murderer, the wife is too pregnant to do much of anything but complain, and Reginald Stewart probably hasn’t made it up those stairs in ten years.”

“Taking that as a ‘no’,” John muttered. The mattress creaked, and Sherlock turned to see him lie down, throwing the covers over himself. The gun was gone, probably shoved under the pillow beside John.

“Besides, a Stewart family heir? Why not murder the Stewarts, then? Accelerate the inheritance process,” Sherlock mused. He paced to the window and pushed the drapes open a handspan, looking out at the unfamiliar cityscape. It wasn’t London; he _needed_ London.

“Burn the place down, take the insurance payoff,” John muttered, his voice muffled by his pillow.

Sherlock spun away from the window and paced back the other way. “Or a Latham — perhaps an unknown bastard, someone who needs time to prove his claim legitimate.”

“Secret Latham heir, living in the walls like in that movie,” John said, voice soft and slurred with fatigue. “Some creepy, pale, undernourished ghost haunting the servants’ passages. Oh wait, that’s you.” He chuckled lazily.

Sherlock huffed and sat down on the edge of the bed, shoving John a few inches to the side to make room. “A serial killer who only targets estate agents? It’s happened before.”

“House wasn’t empty, though,” John said, rolling onto his back. He dragged his pillow towards the centre of the bed and pulled the blankets up to his shoulders, folding his arms atop them. “He’s looking for an audience?”

“Shock value, perhaps,” Sherlock guessed, relieved that his thoughts were finally flowing like lightning crackling through the sky in a violent storm, brilliant flashes of insight coming rapid-fire. “Or the target could be the wife. She’s found the body in both cases — an accomplice?”

“Doesn’t strike me as an accomplice. Victim, then.”

“Mmm. Yes.”

“Why not go after her, then? Plenty of opportunity.”

“Frame her?” Sherlock proposed. “No, ridiculous. The killer would use a gun, then.”

“Scare her, then? Drive her out of the house? Drive her mad?” John twisted, propping up on one elbow. “What if the goal is to split them up? Some ex-girlfriend or boyfriend of one of them?”

The idea didn’t sit right immediately, but Sherlock found himself considering it all the same, for no rational reason. The murders were crimes of opportunity, not premeditation. The lamp used as a bludgeon and makeshift hangman’s rope proved that much. So was it passion? Love or hate?

It wasn’t serial. It couldn’t be serial. Most serial killers needed the ritual of choosing their prey, stalking, hunting... not hoping their prey would just show up, and then using whatever was at hand for the actual deed. Oh, there were a very, very few serial killers who tried to be random, but inevitably they betrayed some pattern, some marker.

“Using an improvised weapon could be part of his pattern,” he muttered, trying to find a way to rationalise how this could be a serial killer. He was still leaning towards a relative — an unknown Stewart or a bastard Latham — but he needed to keep his mind open to other possibilities.

“Hm?” John asked sleepily. He shifted, the mattress dipping low behind Sherlock as John rolled onto his side, curling around Sherlock’s back just close enough that the blankets brushed against Sherlock with every breath John took.

“That could be his pattern. Part of his ritual.”

“Cult ritual or serial ritual?” John asked. They’d dealt with both in their time.

Sherlock fell silent, considering. Strangely, they’d actually dealt with cult activity more than serial killers, most often because desperate relatives wanted to rescue their loved ones — or to safeguard an inheritance before it could be ‘donated’ to a religion. Sherlock shook his head at the thought. He’d prevented any such nonsense long ago by ensuring John would inherit everything of his. He had no faith that Mycroft, for example, would have the proper respect for his violin or laboratory or books.

“Right,” John said, and the warmth of his presence shifted away as he rolled onto his other side. “Let me know if I have to shoot someone. And I _will_ know if you try to steal my gun, Sherlock. I sleep very lightly.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Saturday, 6 July, 1946**

As the months without Harold ticked by, Reggie threw himself into the business he was trying to build, conscious of the enormous cost of staffing Latham Hall and the new baby on the way. He shopped for gifts for both Eleanor and the baby and tried to keep busy, entertaining guests every weekend to fill the house with laughter and song, but he felt his best friend’s absence like a painful emptiness, always there, a phantom limb left to ache after amputation.

Every day, the postman failed to bring him news of Harold, until Reggie worried that he wouldn’t be there to see his godson born. He should never have allowed Harold to go off to India alone. It wasn’t safe. He should have found a way to keep him in England — or, at last resort, to go with him.

And then, on a soggy Friday afternoon, one of the servants came to Reggie’s office. “Mr. Stewart, sir, one of the boys reports a car coming up the drive.”

“Thank you. Let my wife know,” Reggie instructed, thinking Eleanor was still well enough to enjoy playing hostess. In truth, she’d settled down into the lifestyle of landed gentry far better than Reggie himself had. Somewhere inside, he was still a clerk-turned-officer, even though he owned his own accountancy firm now. Well, he and Harold did, since Harold had lent Reggie the money to get the firm started, and had taken his repayment in a share as silent partner.

Downstairs, Reggie found the servants delightedly throwing open the doors to welcome home none other than Harold, suntanned and fit. “Reggie!” he cried, waving an arm when their eyes met, though he didn’t enter the Hall.

“It’s about time!” Reggie shouted back, relieved and thrilled to see Harold alive and apparently unharmed. He hurried the rest of the way down the grand staircase and ran across the marble-floored foyer, dignity before the servants be damned.

Harold had turned out the door again. Now, as Reggie approached, he turned back, clasping a mass of orange and black fur against his chest. “For you, Reggie!” he declared extravagantly, dumping the mass — a good ten stone or more — into Reggie’s arms. The tiger’s head flopped down, adorned with long fangs and glass eyes. Freed of his burden, Harold threw an arm around Reggie’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to his cheek in greeting.

“Missed you, too, old boy,” Reggie said, baffled. “Are you drunk? At two in the afternoon?”

“Ha!” Harold declared, his breath proving the affirmative. “Two in the afternoon, my arse. It’s at least six in the evening in Bombay. Maybe seven.” He clapped Reggie hard on the back, hard enough to make him stagger. “Everything all right with your wife, then? No little Stewarts running around ahead of schedule, are there?”

“No. No, she’s fine.” Reggie managed to laugh and finally passed off the tiger skin rug to a nearby servant. “It’s good to have you back, Harold.”

Harold grinned rakishly before waving an admonishing finger at the servant. “Don’t lose that!” he shouted. Turning to Reggie, he added in a stage whisper, “After Eleanor’s done with this one, put it in your bedroom and make me a godson on it. It’ll be like I’m right there with you.”

 

~~~

 

**Saturday, 27 October 2012**

Rare were the days when John woke quietly. On those times he did, however, as soon as he came to awareness of his surroundings and realised that wakefulness didn’t come with the rapid pulse of a nightmare in his throat, he inevitably stayed right where he was, just so he could enjoy warm sheets and soft pillows and the knowledge that, at least for the moment, no one was shooting at him.

Even more rare were the days when John peacefully awoke to find he wasn’t alone. He’d stopped even pretending to date years ago, after realising his feelings for Sherlock were hopelessly permanent and not some passing phase. Most one-night stands only lasted just as long as it took to get from the pub to bed and then out before dawn was anywhere near the horizon. Only a very few lasted through the night, long enough for him to doze off beside a stranger.

This didn’t feel like a morning-after.

And that thought did make his heart skip, a small surge of adrenaline pushing him completely awake. His hand moved, slipping under the pillow to his right, and his fingers touched his gun. So whoever it was, he trusted that person enough to sleep armed — and only one person fell into that category.

“Christ,” John muttered, rolling over onto his other side, which put him against a thin, bony frame that had no right to be in John’s bed, no matter how very much John didn’t object. “Sherlock.”

This had happened perhaps a dozen times over the last five years, when Sherlock’s need to think aloud had led him up into John’s bedroom, after determining that the skull wasn’t a good enough listener. Some compliment, that: In sleep, John was a better listener than a human skull. Lovely.

He freed his arm from the blankets, which Sherlock had pinned down on one side by his weight, and prodded at Sherlock’s shoulder. “Wake up.”

Sherlock drew a deep breath, deeper than in sleep, and opened his eyes to slits. He made a small, soft sound, halfway between a growl and a purr, and John was tempted to compare him to a cat. The last time he’d done that, though, Sherlock had thrown a fit about how cats were irrational agents of chaos and not orderly, logical thinkers.

“Solve the murders yet?” John asked.

This time, it was only a growl. Sherlock let his head roll back, face turned up to the ceiling, and closed his eyes.

That was a surprise. Usually when Sherlock was at a point where he needed John, conscious or not, to listen to his ideas, it meant that he was close to some brilliant conclusion. Maybe John was losing his ‘best listener’ status, and Sherlock would start taking the skull along when they were called to an out-of-town client. The thought didn’t sit well with John, who was tempted to try and rouse Sherlock from his sulk and make him talk, just to prove he still possessed whatever quality it was that made him so valuable to Sherlock as a listener.

 _Jealous of a bloody skull,_ John thought, telling himself he was being foolish. He fought his way out the other side of the blankets, picking up his gun on the way (lest Sherlock be tempted to steal it), and went to the bathroom. A shower might make him feel better, or at least more awake.

 

~~~

 

“We need to search the house,” Sherlock said as soon as Sophie Stewart opened the door. John’s insistence that they have a decent breakfast at the hotel had put him in a snit, and he was buzzing on caffeine and the sugar he’d surely dumped into his coffee while John’s back had been turned.

Now, John shouldered Sherlock out of the way, taking in the dark circles under Sophie’s eyes and the messy ponytail taming her unwashed hair. The poor woman was a mess, no surprise there. “Good morning, Mrs. Stewart. If you don’t mind, we need to find how the killer is getting in,” he said more gently.

Sophie’s eyes went wide. “The police — They already checked all the doors and windows. We don’t have an alarm. You don’t think —”

John felt Sherlock practically vibrating with eagerness, and spoke up quickly: “We may see things the police missed. That’s why you hired us, after all.”

Sophie’s worried expression melted into embarrassed understanding. “Of course. I’m sorry. It’s just already been a hectic morning,” she said apologetically. She opened the door and beckoned them inside. “I’ve been on the phone with the insurance people, and they’re saying they won’t cover two biological cleanups in less than a week, and now the police don’t know if Ethan will be released before Monday. They need to find a judge, and one of their detectives is saying it could be two killers, Ethan and an accomplice. I don’t think they’d even consider bail if not for you, Mr. Holmes. They said you called them last night...”

John let the words flow over him, nodding and adding soft answers to help bolster her spirits as he took off his coat and let her hang it in the closet. When Sherlock looked like he was about to wander off, John subtly caught his wrist and tugged the sleeve of his overcoat. Sherlock’s huff was less than gracious, but it was quiet enough that Sophie missed it, and she graciously took his coat and scarf without comment.

Then something she said registered in John’s mind, and he asked, “Sorry?”

“Well, we can’t _stay,_ ” Sophie said over her shoulder as she wrestled the heavy coat onto a wooden hanger and then into the packed closet. “We need to be settled somewhere else before the baby’s born, and even once Ethan’s released, he works during the day. I can’t take care of Dad on my own.” She turned and closed the closet door, leaning back against it. In a sad voice, she added, “They’re coming to pick him up on Monday morning. It’s a nice home not too far away. We’ll be able to visit. Very good staff, as well.”

“I’m certain it’s for the best,” John said sadly, though he gave her a reassuring smile. “We’ll try to stay out of your way, though. You must be very busy.”

Her smile was faint and exhausted. “Phone calls and more phone calls. Can I make you some coffee? Tea?”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” John said, before Sherlock could ask for more coffee.

“We’ll start in the family wing,” Sherlock said. When John glanced at him, he quickly added, “Once we’re certain it’s secure, we can move on to the rest of the house.”

The suggestion surprised John, who wondered when Sherlock had suddenly started thinking tactically rather than strategically. He tended to get an idea of the big picture and then just make up the intervening steps as he went. Or perhaps he was just trying to think like John: Secure the civilians before taking any other action. If so, John appreciated the consideration.

The three of them went into the foyer and turned left. In contrast to the rest of the house, the family wing was well-kept, regularly hoovered and dusted. At the first intersection, John nodded to Sherlock and broke away, going straight down the main hallway while Sherlock followed Sophie right, towards the kitchen.

There were three front rooms: Reginald Stewart’s parlour, an office, and another sitting room that had been outfitted with a modern television and a couple of the gaming systems Sherlock would never tolerate at 221B, even if John had been interested, which he wasn’t. He had no need for video games to add excitement to his life.

John checked each room, trying not to think too closely about clearing buildings in Iraq. When people thought of war, they thought of tanks and planes and armies running at each other across open plains. For John, war had been a close-quarters nightmare where every corner and shadow held a new threat, and snipers guarded the open spaces. At least here, he was facing a murderer, one who had yet to kill with a firearm, rather than soldiers who were all too happy to shoot anything that moved.

As he moved down the hall, clearing one room at a time, the distant sound of Sophie’s high, light voice grew faint, until he could no longer hear her. This wing of the house was heated by steam radiators that gurgled and rattled, striving to drive off the damp chill that seeped in through the old, poorly sealed windows. Without thinking about it, John found himself moving more quietly, setting his feet on the carpet with care, ensuring his footing before he shifted his weight. His heart sped up, his breathing turned quiet and deeper, and try as he might, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was _bad_.

The door to the den was just past the hallway that led to the family’s bedrooms and the dining room. A chill swept through John as he passed the hallway, and he caught himself pressing back against the wall on the far side of it as though expecting bullets to fly past. He told himself that he was being ridiculous, but it was hard for him to step away from the faint concealment of the wall, and when he finally did, he darted across the hall and into the den at speed.

Only when he closed the den door — something he hadn’t done in the first two rooms, preferring to listen for any sounds in the house — did he feel a weight leave his chest. The room seemed light and airy, despite the dark panelling, and he was able to breathe easier. Telling himself he was being foolish, he went to search the closets and shadows, though he didn’t open the door to the hallway again.

In the den, he found nothing more ominous than a closet full of camping gear. He doubted the killer would try strangling anyone with fishing wire or stabbing them with rusty hooks, but he did pause to recall that Sherlock’s tetanus vaccination hadn’t yet expired.

As soon as he stepped back into the hallway, the sense of _threat_ returned. He checked the exterior door that led out to what had once been a small garden surrounding a dry, crumbling fountain. The door was locked, but there was enough glass there that it wasn’t by any means secure. Noting it as a potential point of difficulty, he made his way to the hallway intersection.

There he hesitated, tempted to text Sherlock and tell him to wait in the safety of the kitchen with Sophie. John wasn’t afraid for himself as much as Sherlock, whose sense of self-preservation would always lose out to something he deemed _interesting_. He left his mobile in its belt holster, though, and decisively stepped out around the corner, heart pounding.

He saw nothing. No murderer, no body, no reason at all for him to be this tightly wound.

Taking a deep breath, he started down the hallway. He wasn’t familiar with classical English architecture, so he had no idea what the rooms here originally had been. Now, they’d been made over into bedrooms: Ethan and Sophie’s first, followed by Reginald’s.

John had never quite grown accustomed to snooping through strangers’ bedrooms. When he checked the closets and wardrobe and under the bed, he tried to be quick and discreet, while Sherlock probably would have gone through their sock drawers and dug through the boxes under the bed that John had made a point of leaving untouched. John did pause by the window, where several Ikea flat-pack boxes were stacked. Baby furniture, waiting to be assembled. Hopefully they could get this all sorted out and clear Ethan Stewart’s name in time for the baby’s birth.

Shaking his head, John got back on task and let himself out of Ethan and Sophie’s bedroom. Maybe he’d take Sophie up on that offer of coffee after all. He was tired. He shivered a bit, rubbing his hands over his arms, wondering how the family managed to keep the Hall warm once winter really set in, if the radiator was struggling this badly against the autumn’s chill.

He turned left to continue to Reginald’s bedroom and saw someone standing outside the door. The electric sconce beside Reginald’s door had gone out, leaving the figure partially in shadow. For a moment, he assumed it was Sherlock, but the figure was too short — and definitely not pregnant enough to be Sophie.

“Ethan?” he asked, wondering if he’d somehow missed the return of Sophie’s jailed husband. His thoughts had been wandering, but only for a couple of minutes, or so he thought. He would’ve heard the commotion, had Ethan returned. Maybe it was someone from the assisted living facility Sophie had contacted, come to do a preliminary examination of Reginald.

The figure turned, and the motion drew illumination around the shape like a shroud of faint, foggy light. An icy wind slithered over John’s hands and throat and face, almost burning every inch of bare skin, ruffling his hair and settling into his bones. The old wound in his shoulder ached with a sudden burn as if fresh once more. The earthy smell of wet wool filled his nostrils, musky and thick over the sharper scent of blood.

John’s heart gave a hard thud against his ribs, slamming adrenaline into his system. He threw himself back into Ethan and Sophie’s bedroom and snatched the SIG from the holster at the small of his back. His ears strained for any hint of footsteps, the sound of breath or movement, but all he could hear was the damnable radiator clattering away on the far side of the room like a dying lorry.

He pressed his back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment as he took deep, quiet breaths. He forced his fingers not to clench up around the SIG’s grip. As the first shock of the adrenaline wore off, he felt his lips curve up in a cold, hungry grin, a learned reaction formed first in battle and reinforced in London, thanks to the madness of living with Sherlock Holmes.

In the instant before John stepped out into the hallway, he mapped out every flex and tense of his muscles, and his subsequent movements were as graceful as a dancer’s. The SIG was rock-steady in his hands, leveled right at where the figure should have been  — but it was no longer there, leaving an empty patch of darkness in front of Reginald’s door.

Either the intruder had gone into the old man’s bedroom or down the hall, to the dining room and kitchen area. John broke into a sprint, striving for silence without compromising too much speed, suddenly torn between rushing to Sherlock’s side and checking on Reginald. He hesitated — he actually _hesitated,_ despite his oath as a doctor and his principles — and he had to force himself to run to the helpless old man’s defence instead of rushing to Sherlock’s side.

He shouldn’t have wasted time ducking for cover at all. He could’ve drawn the SIG and engaged. If the man outside the door hadn’t been Ethan, then it must have been the murderer, and John had missed a perfect opportunity to take him into custody. The murderer might well have decided to accelerate his timetable, whatever it was, and take Reginald out of the picture directly, which would put the old man’s blood right on John’s hands if he were dead.

He hit Reginald’s door without pause, wrenching the knob with his right hand and leading with his left, sweeping the SIG from side-to-side as he scanned the room for threats. Reginald’s bed was a motorised hospital bed with rails, and he had a sleep apnea machine on the bedside table, hoses and cables snaking along the top of the bed like cobwebs. There was a telly on a wheeled table near the bed and an armchair opposite. There was no sign of Reginald, his wheelchair, or the intruder.

He cleared the room with methodical precision, throwing open doors and aiming the SIG at empty interiors: closet, wardrobe, armoire, bathroom, shower enclosure.

He was alone.

Standing in the middle of the empty bedroom, fingers tight around the grip of the SIG, John breathed deeply and told his heart that it could stop pounding. Obviously he’d seen... a shadow. Some odd reflection off a window elsewhere in the house. An afterimage burned into his eyes as he looked from the brightly lit bedroom into the dim hallway outside Reginald’s door.

First the footprint in the hallway. Then the handprint on the corpse. Now this. He was losing it. He’d gone through hell in the war and then done it all over again when Sherlock had ‘died’, and _now_ he was finally cracking under the pressure. He’d seen a shadow and given it shape through fears and expectations that they’d find _someone_ lurking in the old house.

There had to be some rational explanation, though. Why would he be going mad now, rather than ten years ago, when he’d first been exposed to Sherlock’s way of life?

Slowly, the adrenaline tide ebbed, settling John’s blood and brain into a buzzing high, now that the threat, real or imagined, had finally passed. Laughing at himself, he holstered the weapon at the small of his back and tugged his shirt down to cover the grip. Thankfully, Sherlock hadn’t been present to witness his very undignified behavior. He’d never hear the end of it.

 _“John!”_ came Sherlock’s petulant shout, right on cue. “Are you done yet?”

Rolling his eyes, John left Reginald’s room and closed the door with a soft, quiet click. “Coming!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Wednesday, 21 August, 1946**

All of Latham Hall seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation. The servants had been in a panicked flurry until Harold took charge, ordering them all away with instructions for tea and sandwiches. Now, Harold stood in the hallway like the calm eye of a hurricane that sent Reggie pacing back and forth, stopping only when Harold put out an arm, offering a lit cigarette.

“Here, have a pause before you sprain something important,” Harold advised wryly. “She’s the one who’s supposed to walk or some rubbish, not you.”

Grateful for any direction, Reggie took the cigarette and sat down on the hallway bench. The deep breath of smoke seemed to help him find his calm. Harold sat down beside him, sharp eyes watching as though prepared to catch Reggie if he showed any hint of standing to resume his pacing.

Amused at the vigilance, Reggie fondly accused, “It’s all well and good for you to be so bloody calm. That’s my son being born in there.”

“Or daughter.” Harold lit his own cigarette and leaned back, blowing a line of smoke up at the ceiling. “Wouldn’t that be just like God, giving you a daughter?”

“Bite your tongue. And remember, you’ll be the godfather, no matter what. That means if it _is_ a daughter, when I go after the young bucks that come sniffing ’round, you’re the one driving the getaway car.”

Harold grinned at him, though there was a sad little edge to his smile. “Just a week ago, you were bragging at your luck being born a man and how you’d done the easy part of this whole family thing already. Changing your mind so soon? Would you rather _I_ be the man for you both?”

“Touch my wife, and I’ll shoot you myself,” Reggie threatened, trying not to laugh as he did.

Harold blew out a puff of smoke through his nostrils and looked at the door across the hallway. “She’s all yours, old chap,” he said a bit wistfully.

Reggie studied his best friend’s profile, feeling the return of the nagging sense of defeat. He’d been trying for years to find the perfect woman for Harold, but every attempt seemed doomed to failure. Oh, they’d had a few double dates in the old bachelor days, but Harold had always been a difficult one. Now that Reggie was married, he was even more determined that Harold should have his own share of the happiness that came with having a wife.

“What about the midwife?” Reggie suggested. “Now she’s a pretty little thing. And smart, too. You like them clever, don’t you?”

Harold switched his cigarette to his other hand and patted Reggie’s knee comfortingly. “Just because one of us fell into the trap of matrimony doesn’t mean the other has to follow suit. I’m quite content to be bachelor enough for both of us. Besides, you’ll want me around to keep an eye on your daughter,” he added, pointing across the hall. He slouched back and took another deep breath of fragrant smoke. “It won’t do you a damned bit of good if I’m married and fathering children of my own.”

“You keep saying ‘daughter’. Ellie swore she was carrying my son. Kicked up a storm, the little tyke did,” Reggie added proudly.

Harold’s eyes seemed to glitter oddly for a moment. “Daughter first, Reggie. Then, a son.” He looked directly at Reggie and exhaled a stream of smoke through his nostrils. “And that, you can bank on.”

 

~~~

 

**Saturday, 27 October 2012**

“Latham Hall may be small for the period in which it was built, but it’s still far larger than any terraced house we’ve had to search,” Sherlock hinted as he and John walked out into the grand foyer. “Three more wings and the attic —”

“It was one thing to split up to search the family’s wing. I’m not allowing you to go creeping through deserted corridors on your own with a murderer on the loose,” John said without hesitation.

“Separately, we can cover more ground,” he proposed, appealing to John’s tactical side. Every impulse in Sherlock’s brain was screaming for him to find the killer, unravel the mystery, solve the puzzle, and to do it now, now, now. Besides, it wasn’t as if he couldn’t defend himself, even without a weapon.

Unfortunately, John had often made it clear that, in his opinion, Sherlock’s martial arts training didn’t qualify in most circumstances as anything but a last-ditch defence. It was patently unfair, especially since John had committed the unthinkable, almost unforgivable offence of siding with Mycroft on the matter of Sherlock carrying a handgun of his own.

“And end up with one or both of us hurt? No,” John answered fiercely, stabbing a finger at Sherlock’s chest. He was six inches shorter and looked as harmless as a chartered accountant until his ire was up. Then, his dark blue eyes blazed and his jaw set and no force on earth would stop him from his course.

Sherlock glared at John in a last-ditch effort to get him to change his mind through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness. Sometimes, John would give in simply because Sherlock wanted him to, but apparently that wouldn’t work this time. With the civilians safe in the family wing, John was content to stand in the foyer and argue for the rest of the day, if necessary.

“Fine,” Sherlock finally said, wondering how this short, kindly doctor could be the only person _on the planet_ to whom Sherlock would actually surrender anything. Even Mycroft, for all his lazy, wasted intellect and political power couldn’t wring one-tenth the concessions from him, and that after a lifetime of watching Sherlock grow up.

John’s smile of approval shouldn’t have resonated so deep inside Sherlock — and certainly not every time he saw it, to the point where he found himself altering his behaviour just to make John smile again.

They went up the main staircase, where John paused at the landing, looking up at the family portrait. Sherlock had noted it and promptly disregarded it as irrelevant. Now, though, John looked at the plaque below the gilt frame. “Harold Latham, Reginald Stewart, and Eleanor Bennett-Stewart. Twenty-second October, nineteen-hundred forty-five.” He glanced at Sherlock. “ _Exactly_ sixty-seven years before the first death.”

“Coincidence,” Sherlock dismissed, looking up at the uniformed figure of Harold Latham. Wedding portraits were common enough, but the presence of a third subject was highly unusual — especially since Harold wasn’t related to the groom or the bride.

“You don’t think...”

Sherlock waited for John’s words to continue or for some insight to flash into being in his mind, but he was met solely with frustrating silence. Wherever John’s thoughts had gone, Sherlock’s didn’t follow. “Think what?” he finally prompted.

John shrugged tightly, the motion less pronounced on the left side, as though his shoulder were hurting him. “Well, just because some things were illegal doesn’t mean they never happened.”

Sherlock stared at John, more worried about his shoulder — which shouldn’t have been hurting him, not after all these years — than whatever he was insinuating. Because of his concern, it took him several seconds to follow John’s thoughts to a logical conclusion. “Polyamory?” Excitement snapped through his brain, just like last night. He reached for John’s shoulder before catching himself, remembering he’d been favoring it. “John! You’re brilliant!”

“Not that I don’t enjoy hearing it, but why do you say that?” John asked, grinning up at Sherlock.

“What if Reginald was sterile? In that case, Ethan might be a Latham, not a Stewart.”

John’s eyes went distant, a deep crease appearing between his brows. “There might be others, then. Competition for rights to Latham Hall.”

“And a reason to stop the sale.” Sherlock caught John’s arm and hurried up to the left, mentally reviewing what he knew of the architecture of Latham Hall. “We’ll start in the library. There may be a family tree in the bible there.”

 

~~~

 

The library was exactly as Sherlock had expected, with three walls of high bookshelves broken only by a fireplace, a reckless necessity left over from the days before proper central heating. The fourth wall held two regrettably large windows positioned precisely to admit sunlight in a pattern that guaranteed maximum damage to fragile books. Sherlock was all for searchable electronic archives, but books — real, original books — had enough inherent value to be worthy of preservation.

Latham Hall as a whole, in fact, was in a terrible state of neglect, and Sherlock couldn’t help but think of the changes he would make, were it his decision. UV-resistant glass, for one.

But he could turn the situation to his advantage. He stopped just inside the library doorway, putting out an arm to stop John, and said, “Carpet. Dust.”

“Footprints?” John asked.

Sherlock smiled, pleased that they were thinking in accord, as they should be. “Take the right side,” he said, mentally dividing the room in half.

They moved into the room together, attention fixed primarily to the ageing Persian rug that was in desperate need of restoration or replacement. It looked as though the furniture hadn’t been moved for years, and the rug itself was thick with dust that puffed gently up onto Sherlock’s once-polished shoes with every step. Much more practical, as always, John wore trainers. Reprehensible as his fashion sense was, perhaps just this once his choice of dress had been a wise decision.

Sherlock covered his half of the carpet and found nothing. He wasn’t surprised, but it was still a bit of a disappointment. At the very least, he should’ve found footprints from Ethan or Sophie. Well, Ethan. Sophie probably shouldn’t try to come up the stairs until she was finished with gestation. No one _appreciated_ a proper library, these days. The younger Stewarts probably barely even recalled having one, what with the ‘den’ downstairs, with its telly and game consoles. The elder Stewart probably hadn’t been up here for ten years or more.

Huffing with irritation, Sherlock sat down at the neglected desk. The chair was from the seventies, the leather cracked over padding that felt as if it compressed to powder under his weight. Once he was certain it wouldn’t collapse, he started opening drawers, letting his senses report without any preconception of what he should find. The desk, like much of Latham Hall, was an antique, early turn of the century. Well, _last_ century.  Well tended, smooth drawer action, built to last despite the neglect of years. The paper inside the small central drawer was old and brittle despite the humidity. No clutter of ballpoint pens or markers to leak ink everywhere. No pens at all, in fact. Probably ransacked for pens and never restocked.

“This what you’re looking for?” John asked, interrupting Sherlock’s musing as he set a massive book in the centre of the desk. Carefully. Unlike most people, John had proper respect for books.

“Perfect,” Sherlock said, holding out his hand as he visually examined the leather cover and faded traces of gilded lettering. “Gloves.”

John sighed. “Didn’t bring any.”

“Front left pocket. I always carry a pair. You know that.” The gilding wasn’t rubbed off in a particular pattern, though there were clear finger-marks along the outside edge and at the spine from where the book had been handled: lifted from the shelf, set down, opened, and closed.

With a huff of resignation, John came up beside Sherlock and got a hand between his hip and the bent wood arm of the chair. Sherlock tipped his head to look at the edges of the pages, trying to spot any indication that the book had been open to one page or section more than others, but nothing was immediately apparent.

Then, for just a moment, Sherlock forgot everything as John’s fingers finally parted fabric and found the pocket of his trousers. John’s right arm pressed against the back of the chair, tipping it a few inches, as he leaned in further to reach into the depths of the pocket with his left.

This used to be a mindless convenience, a way for Sherlock to get whatever he wanted without having to distract his attention from the task at hand. Years ago, he’d preferred to work at Barts, where he could always lure Molly or some student into fetching for him so he didn’t have to interrupt delicate research or break the focus on his microscope. But at some point in time, it had become different with John, almost a pathological need to feel John’s touch.

During the three empty years he’d spent on his solitary hunt, how many times had he called for John to get his mobile or a pen or _anything,_ only to be answered with silence?

Now, he found any excuse, and did so without even being consciously aware of it, and John had long since stopped protesting. Oh, he’d accuse Sherlock of laziness, but that was nothing new. And he could still be depended upon to get up out of his chair or stop what he was doing so he could get a pen from Sherlock’s shirt, the mobile off his belt, or gloves out of his pocket.

He dropped the latex onto Sherlock’s outstretched palm and said, “You can put them on yourself, lazy git,” in a tone of affection and patently false irritation.

Without looking up, Sherlock smiled and began to put on the gloves. “See if you can find a box or folio of legal documents. I’d like to see the actual papers deeding Latham Hall to Reginald Stewart.”

 

~~~

 

Thirty minutes was all the time John could rationalise spending in the library. He had the urge to move, to keep moving, to not stay where he and Sherlock could be targeted and ambushed, which was ridiculous, but his emotional reaction had nothing to do with logic. In fact, he had no idea what had put his finger on what exactly had triggered his instincts. He didn’t even have the excuse of being in an old, half-deserted house late at night.

But something had him jumping at shadows, which was bad. Extremely bad. A little vigilance went a long way in battle, but too much and he’d shoot anything that moved, which would most likely be Sherlock, with their luck. Despite all of John’s coaching, Sherlock had a habit of dashing off after anything that caught his eye, to the point where John was contemplating keeping him on a leash.

“Right,” John finally said as he caught himself pacing restlessly. He was itching to get out into the halls and _do something_.  “Come on, Sherlock.”

“But —”

“We’re hunting a murderer. You like that sort of thing, remember?” he pointed out, giving a brittle grin in response to Sherlock’s petulant expression.

Sherlock glanced down at the bible and pursed his lips as though considering a counter-argument. Then he rose and stripped off his gloves. “It was a shot in the dark, in any case,” he conceded, dropping the gloves onto the desk. “Any bastard would have to have been born to Harold Latham. He was the only living heir, even taking into account distant cousins.”

“If he’d had anyone, wouldn’t she have been in the painting on the staircase?” John asked, watching surreptitiously as Sherlock ran his hands, pale with powder from the gloves, through his hair. He was in need of a haircut again — not that John minded at all when his hair was long enough to tumble into his eyes. It was amusing to watch Sherlock’s inner battle between the irritation of long hair and the necessity of wasting time at a salon. No cheap ten-quid barber for a Holmes, naturally.

“Not if it was an illicit affair,” Sherlock pointed out as he circled the desk. “His papers may be in a safe somewhere, possibly concealed behind a painting or mirror.”

“Are we losing focus?” John asked as he stepped out into the hall. He looked left and right, momentarily overcome by the enormity of searching the whole house. For a supposedly small stately home, Latham Hall felt intimidatingly huge..

To John’s surprise, Sherlock didn’t answer immediately. He turned off the library light and stopped at John’s side. “I don’t know,” he quietly admitted in such a worrying tone that John looked up at him. “Two murders already. I should know much more, John. Something about this isn’t right.”

He’d never heard Sherlock admit such a thing. He put a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder and comfortingly said, “You’ll figure it out. You always do, right?”

“Perhaps I should speak to Reginald Stewart,” Sherlock proposed as John turned down the hall to the left, instinctively avoiding the trophy room.

For one moment, John considered the proposal rationally, before realising Sherlock probably meant to interrogate Reginald on his marriage, his relationship to Harold Latham, and the paternity of his offspring.

“No!” he exclaimed, horrified at the idea of Sherlock giving a nice old man a heart attack. “Sherlock, you are _not_ to ask that nice old man if he — No, don’t ask him _anything_ about his family or his children.”

“You said yourself, just because some things were illegal —”

“Sherlock,” John warned.

“Fine,” Sherlock snapped sullenly. “This may come down to genetic testing, though — if nothing else, to test the validity of Ethan Stewart’s inheritance.”

“Then we’ll do it properly. If we end up shocking a man who’s nearing a hundred and a woman who’s that far along in her pregnancy, one of us will be doing CPR while the other delivers a baby.”

 

~~~

 

Other than the wing where the Stewart family lived, the rooms in Latham Hall were long since left neglected save for spiders spinning their webs in the windows. The Hall had gone through several stages of remodeling to bring it to its current incarnation. Servants’ quarters and storerooms had been repurposed. Interior walls had been knocked down or added. Plumbing had been replaced, and gas pipes and electric wires had been run through it all, installed and repaired and rerouted.

Much of the hard furniture remained, as did carpets, curtains, and some upholstered pieces covered with bedsheets now thick with dust. One glance into the first room showed Sherlock an almost overwhelming array of trace evidence — the footprints of children sneaking into uninhabited rooms to play, places where teens smoked and drank and brought home forbidden lovers to snog in dark, dusty corners.

Sherlock thought about all he could learn through the search, however slow, of every room in the old house. He considered the possibility of concealed passages and servants’ staircases and finding the trail a murderer could take — the excitement of a physical stalk and chase, blood pounding, adrenaline singing, physical energy engaging the body to distract from a mind growing frustrated with a lack of clear facts.

Reluctantly, he resisted the temptation and bent his thoughts to mentally narrowing down the most likely places where he could find Harold Latham’s personal papers. “The attic,” he finally said. Harold Latham must have died some time ago. His papers wouldn’t be stored close at hand. They’d be locked away in a document safe or boxed for safe-keeping in the attic.

“Works for me,” John said agreeably. “Know how to find it?”

“Servant’s wing, above the family’s current residence,” he said at once, his mind filtering through generalised architectural plans learned not just through idle reading at uni but from his explorations of homes where he’d been sent to make friends with supposedly suitable children from supposedly suitable families. Inevitably, those visits had ended with the household servants, other families and friends, or occasionally the police called in to search the house from top to bottom, until finally, Sherlock’s parents realised that any adults who were not them would have no hope of keeping an eye on Sherlock when he chose to disappear.

So he found the attic access with ease, in a large walk-in closet off one of the narrow hallways. As he went in to pull the trapdoor open, John examined the door and asked, “Why does a closet have a lock on it?”

“Linens,” Sherlock explained. “Expensive fabric — cotton and silk. Likely to get stolen, and the head housekeeper would have been responsible for its replacement. The linens would be dispensed to servants once a week or whenever the beds needed to be changed.”

Dust showered down over him, making him close his eyes tightly and shake his head. Low, fond laughter filled the closet, and John said, “Here, let me.”

Sherlock ducked his head and let John ruffle through his hair for a few more seconds than was probably necessary. The touch was warming, setting Sherlock’s scalp alight with tingles that spread down his spine along every nerve in his body, before he realized he’d pushed his head against John’s hand like some deplorable cat looking to be petted.

With a toss of his head, he jerked away and reached for the cord to let down the sloped ladder. He caught the end as it slid haltingly down along old, ungreased rails, the squeal of metal-on-metal drowning out the sound of their breathing.

Remembering that John’s shoulder had been hurting, Sherlock settled the ladder but didn’t start climbing up. “It’s cold up there. Do you want to get your jacket?”

John’s head tipped a few degrees to one side, and one corner of his mouth rose higher than the other. Surprised and pleased, he said, “I’m fine, thanks. Shall we?”

Sherlock returned the smile, verified that his torch was in his pocket, and headed up the ladder, into the darkness.

 

~~~

 

From the front, Latham Hall appeared to be a perfect rectangle, six rooms wide with a foyer in the centre, two storeys high plus an attic. From the back, though, the Hall was built out in a jagged shape, allowing interior rooms to have windows to admit light and fresh air, though those windows often looked directly out against a wall or into another window. Guests would have been housed along the front and exterior sides, while servants were relegated to the smaller, less desirable rooms.

In the earliest years, the attic would have been used to house additional servants, both those in-residence and who accompanied guests. Later, once personal servants were no longer fashionable, the attic had been given over to storage — seasonal at first, before items were brought up and simply left there, buried under more recent detritus left by remodeling projects and the whims of fashion.

Sherlock ran his blacklight torch over the hills and valleys of furniture, crates, cardboard boxes, lamps, carpentry and gardening supplies, mounds of fabric, and moldering stacks of newspapers and magazines.

“Christ,” John muttered, climbing up beside Sherlock. “We could just agree there’s no murderer up here and start downstairs.”

“Letters and personal papers of Harold Latham,” Sherlock reminded him grimly, just a bit overwhelmed at the thought of searching through all of this in hopes of finding papers to some secret lover — papers that might not even exist.

John took a deep breath and scrubbed a hand through his hair. He was keeping it shorter these days, almost military-short, perhaps in an effort to minimise the effect of the increasing presence of grey hairs. For almost a year now, Sherlock had been tempted to advise him otherwise, but had refrained from making the suggestion.

“Right,” John said, giving his characteristic curt, determined nod. With one more glance around, he seemed to arbitrarily pick a direction, and took a step that way. “Let’s get started.”

Overwhelmed by the chaos of the attic, Sherlock saw no reason to object. Without John’s intervention, he might have stood there for the rest of the day, unable to choose a starting point. Relieved, Sherlock nodded and helpfully directed the light in the direction John had chosen. Working together, he estimated they should probably be able to finish a cursory search by the time John would insist upon stopping for lunch.

Once offered a starting point, Sherlock was able to devise a methodical search pattern, taking into account their single torch. And that was a sign of his frustration with this case: that he hadn’t suggested John bring a torch of his own. But he shouldn’t have had to suggest it at all, because John usually _did_ carry a torch — just a small penlight suitable for carrying in the pocket of a lab coat, but still. Why wasn’t John, soldier-trained to always be ready, prepared for this?

Something was wrong with both of them. This case... this damned case! He should have solved it by now, or he should have at least had an idea. More to the point, he should have been _enjoying_ the challenge, the novelty of a case he couldn’t solve with one bored glance and a couple of snide remarks to his clients or the police, but he wasn’t enjoying it. Not at all.

 

~~~

 

By the time it was almost midday, they had searched precisely half of the attic, the midpoint marked by the wiring and bracing for the chandelier in the grand foyer. The floor was braced with heavy beams to support the weight of the monstrosity, and electrical wiring — certainly not to code — slithered along the beams like serpents. Latham Hall’s tide of castoff furniture and rubbish swept around the chandelier like a seething hurricane around a quiet eye. Sherlock kept to the chaotic outer edge, thinking it best not to draw John’s attention to the height of the grand foyer below their feet.

He actually had high hopes for the centre of the attic. Logic dictated that older pieces would have been moved aside to make room for more recent additions. The perimeter and deep centre were the two most likely places to find anything dating back to Harold Latham’s time — around the mid forties, judging by the portrait in the foyer below. Of course, part of that depended on the location of the larger trapdoors suitable for bringing up furniture, doors Sherlock had yet to find.

After finishing his search of a chest of drawers that now acted as a mausoleum for dead spiders, Sherlock straightened, flexing shoulders gone tight from his uncomfortable crouch. He turned the blacklight away — John protested that he wasn’t finished searching the child’s toy box he’d found — and located the stack of wooden boxes he’d glimpsed earlier.

“There. Come along, John,” he said, thinking boxes were more likely to contain personal documents than a toy box. He stepped towards them, ignoring the cloth-draped settee.

“Sherlock!”

The tone of John’s voice — not frustrated or exasperated or happy or a hundred other intonations Sherlock had committed to permanent memory — spurred Sherlock to drop into a defensive crouch, keeping the torch steady to illuminate whatever threat John had seen and Sherlock had missed. He scanned the area, seeing only deep shadows pierced by dusty beams of faint light coming in through tiny attic windows. His breath steamed in air that had gone colder, presumably as they’d passed close to one of those windows that had been broken, though Sherlock hadn’t noticed the temperature drop until now.

“Oh, Christ,” John whispered, his voice so choked with fear that Sherlock’s own heart thudded in panic, because _nothing_ frightened John — not like this, not even heights.

Sherlock forgot all about searching for the papers, forgot about whatever John had seen, forgot about everything but his worry for John. He rose and lifted his foot, asking, “What —”

_“No!”_ John shouted, and there was a loud, metallic clatter — John’s gun — as John lunged at him.

Sherlock completed his step, looking once more for whatever threat John had seen, and the attic air had gone positively icy, cold enough that a corner of his mind hinted that perhaps an unseasonable snowfall was on its way beyond the thin, poorly insulated attic walls. And John’s strong hands closed around Sherlock’s sleeve, compressing the fine wool of his jacket and combed cotton shirt, pressing warmly into the flesh below, just as Sherlock’s foot touched the wooden floor.

With a great _crack,_ the floor shattered, rotting boards giving way to open air, and Sherlock’s muscles failed him as he braced to shift his weight onto a surface that was no longer there. His heart leaped, flooding his muscles with adrenaline, but it was too late. The floor’s rotting boards had given way not just under one foot but both, and for one terrible instant, the years fell back and he was suspended in that timeless instant before gravity took hold of fragile, breakable flesh and bone. But this time, there was no plan, no safe landing waiting for him below — only splintered wood and a drop of thirty feet or more to a hard marble floor.


	7. Chapter 7

**Wednesday, 24 December, 1947**

“That was a near-miss,” Reggie said as he closed the trophy room door, muffling the sounds of the piano and laughter from the parlour. Guests had been arriving since Sunday, a steady string of former soldiers and business associates.

“What’s that?” Harold asked from where he was sitting — sulking, truth be told — in his armchair. The firelight gave his skin a ruddy hue, moderating the sharp contrast of pale skin and dark beard into something less cadaverous.

“Lieutenant Girsham and the others are in the parlour, singing highlights from that American composer, Irving Berlin. He tried to pressure me into a duo. I very nearly had to shoot my way out of there,” Reggie teased, hoping to evoke a smile.

Instead, Harold glared darkly into the hearth. “God, I hate the holidays. Tell me again why I let you talk me into staying in England. There’s a New Year’s cruise to the Caribbean Islands, you know.”

Reggie couldn’t help but shiver. Harold’s trip to India had resulted not just in more trophies to decorate this room where they spent more evenings, but dark stories, and not all of them about stalking wounded tigers through the jungle. He’d met mystics there, soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and though Reggie knew it was all rubbish, the idea seemed to have caught fire for Harold. It didn’t take much of a leap for Reggie to know Harold’s interest in the Caribbean had nothing to do with a relaxing tropical cruise and everything to do with voodoo or some other occult nonsense.

Thinking to distract Harold, Reggie settled into his customary armchair and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Look, Ellie wanted me to save the surprise for tomorrow — a little Christmas gift from us — but I think this should be a private matter.”

Some little hint of interest appeared in Harold’s eyes as he turned to face Reggie. “What’s that, then?”

Nervously, Reggie asked, “Your father — his name was Phillip, wasn’t it?” This wasn’t his right. His own father’s name was Ethan, and even common working families had their traditions.

A genuine smile appeared on Harold’s face for the first time in what felt like weeks. “Phillip, yes. Why?”

Reggie smiled at Harold and reached out to set a hand on Harold’s forearm. “If Ellie gives me a son this time ’round, I’d like to name him Phillip. If that’s all right, that is.”

Harold’s laugh was rusty and hollow at first, before life filled the sound, bringing forth a warmth that hadn’t been felt in the trophy room for months. “Phillip. Phillip Stewart. By God, I’d like that, Reggie.”

Relieved the idea had gone over so well, Reggie sat back and removed two cigars from the breast pocket of his jacket. He offered one to Harold and proposed, “Break out the brandy then, Harold, and let’s drink to a male heir to Latham Hall.”

 

~~~

 

**Saturday, 27 October 2012**

“There. Come along, John,” Sherlock said, and darkness engulfed John, prematurely ending his search of the small toy chest.

He rose, thinking that he should just take the damned torch away from Sherlock, who kept leaping from one piece of furniture to the next, never giving John sufficient time to look for hidden papers or concealed panels. He opened his mouth and inhaled air that had turned so cold that his lungs burned in painful protest.

Sherlock stepped away, torch aimed downwards at a stack of wooden boxes, but another light caught John’s eye, a shimmer of green that looked like a fog of swirling dust. A person.

_The murderer,_ John thought, left hand drawing his SIG clumsily, shoulder burning from the cold that had settled into scarred flesh like splinters digging deep.

“Sherlock!” he shouted in warning as Sherlock began the step that would block John’s line-of-sight, and thank god, Sherlock dropped into a crouch. The blue-white light from the torch threw mad shadows over the sloped underside of the roof, but John could see the man standing in darkness anyway, as though he walked in an unseen spotlight, tinged green.

The man wore an old-fashioned woolen military uniform, neatly stitched olive drab and brown leather that turned to a rusty shadow over his left shoulder and arm, matching the darkness that shadowed half his face, marring the perfect symmetry of his neat brown beard.

“Oh, Christ,” John whispered, _knowing_ that he’d gone mad, because he knew that face. _Harold Latham._

Latham’s left hand lifted, palm facing outward, _reaching_ for Sherlock.

John’s soldier-instincts took over. His finger tightened on the trigger, muscles flexing, tendons straining. Ten foot-pounds of pressure for the first shot; four and a half for subsequent shots. John’s muscles knew how to compensate for the recoil. At this distance and with this unnatural lighting, he could empty the magazine into a palm-sized cluster, despite how the cold had settled deep into his bones, making him shiver.

Then Sherlock rose, turning, the light sweeping wildly around as he blocked John’s shot.

Without hesitation, John dropped the SIG and grabbed hold of Sherlock with both hands, shouting, _“No!”_

The world shattered, a nightmare of wood splintering underfoot. For an instant, John fought the pull of gravity, holding Sherlock’s weight close, using his own body to lever Sherlock back away from the sudden, deadly brightness that seared up from the emptiness that had, moments ago, been the attic floor.

The grand foyer, he recognised as the crashing, splintering sound of wood hitting distant marble echoed back up through the growing hole in the floor. The grand foyer, where two people had already died above that marble floor, and John _would not allow_ a third body to be added to that death toll — not Sherlock’s.

He threw all his strength into twisting around, throwing Sherlock back behind himself, not caring if the shattering wood claimed his own life. Muscles screamed in protest as Sherlock instinctively fought back for just an instant.

The world spun dizzily. As soon as Sherlock was away from the hole in the floor, John _pushed,_ though he knew he would stagger back.

But then something hit him, an arctic, electric chill that shocked his spine and ripped through the old scar in his shoulder, and he staggered forwards instead. His body slammed into Sherlock’s and they both went over the settee in a rush. Sherlock let out a grunt of startled pain and John’s knee hit some decorative bit of wood at just the right angle to deaden the nerves.

They rolled over the back of the settee, Sherlock’s body landing atop John for just a moment before momentum kicked them off the cushions and over, and John caught Sherlock’s head with one hand to cushion the impact of his skull against the treacherous attic floor.

For one moment, John lay atop Sherlock, not feeling the pain in his hand or knee or shoulder — feeling nothing but relief that Sherlock was _safe_. They were both panting for breath, drawing in great gulps of air that was no longer achingly cold.

Then John remembered what he’d seen — what he _couldn’t_ have seen — and he twisted free, trying to be gentle as he got his hand out from under Sherlock’s head. His gun was gone, but he wasn’t helpless.

The murderer had to be disguising himself as Harold Latham. That was the _only rational excuse_. John didn’t think about anything else — the cold, the _push_ that had sent him into Sherlock when he should have fallen backwards to his death, the way the figure might have been reaching out not to grab Sherlock but to _stop him_.

The adrenaline seemed to vanish from his blood in an instant, leaving him breathless and shaky. He wanted to get up and find his weapon and find the murderer, but he sat down beside Sherlock with a hard thump that rattled his spine. Now, all the pain crashed in on him. He could feel a deep bruise settling right under his kneecap, and his hand ached from where Sherlock’s skull had cracked his knuckles against the floor. He wanted to rub at the phantom pain in his shoulder, to try and ease the ache of a gunshot wound that hadn’t hurt for _years_ until now, until they’d come to Latham Hall, but he couldn’t take his right hand off Sherlock’s chest, as if the harsh, rapid rise and fall of Sherlock’s breathing was the only thing keeping him sane.

“John?” Sherlock finally asked, covering John’s hand with his own. He sat up without any apparent difficulty, and some of the tension knotted up in John’s chest began to ease. No damage to Sherlock’s spine. That was good. Very good.

He pulled Sherlock close, and his momentary impulse to check his scalp for blood turned into the desperate need to just hold Sherlock, reassuring himself that this was _real,_ and that Sherlock wasn’t lying broken and bloody on the marble chessboard floor below.

Despite his dislike of physical contact, Sherlock’s arms slid around John’s body. “How did you know?” he asked quietly, breath ghosting over John’s ear, his living warmth driving away the last of the chill.

“I —” John began, before he stopped. Already, he was questioning himself, because he couldn’t explain this at all without sounding mad. If the man he’d seen had been real, a murderer disguising himself as a man long dead, then he wouldn’t have helped John and Sherlock — he wouldn’t have tried to warn Sherlock about the rotted boards, and he wouldn’t have pushed John back away from the hole in the floor.

The other explanation was far worse. No force on earth could compel John to say to Sherlock Holmes, of all people, that he thought he’d seen a ghost.

Finally, he shook his head. “I heard the boards crack,” he lied weakly.

Then, only then, did the panic really hit home. His arms went so tight that Sherlock tensed, body fighting for the room to breathe. Consumed by the sudden need to get away from that deadly fall, John pushed clumsily to his feet, tugging Sherlock up with him. “Back. Back,” he said aloud — or he thought he did, though the words might have just echoed silently in his head.

From downstairs, Sophie’s voice cried, “Mr. Holmes? Doctor?”

John took a breath, trying to force words past the tightness in his throat, but he couldn’t speak. After a moment, Sherlock answered, “We’re fine! Stay back!”

“We need to go,” John managed to say.

“Your gun —”

“Sod the damned —”

_“John,”_ Sherlock said, his voice a blend of strength and compassion, a tone that belonged only to John, one that no one else ever got to hear. It was a steady, calm promise that everything was fine now. After all their years together, they needed few words between them.

John nodded, allowing Sherlock to step away. “I’m fine,” he said. It, too, was a lie, but this lie had a nobler purpose than deception. If he said it enough, he might believe it, and then he wouldn’t be worried about ghosts or madness or Sherlock falling.

“Stay here. I’ll find —”

“No,” John interrupted. With the light from the grand foyer streaming up through the hole in the floor, he could see Sherlock’s expression, full of the concern and compassion he hid so well from the rest of the world. “I’ll get it. Stay here.”

Sherlock’s pale blue eyes were sharp and knowing. He nodded, surrendering without argument. “The torch as well,” he added, his voice back to business-as-usual.

Gratefully, John nodded. He’d find the torch and the SIG, and they’d go downstairs to talk to Sophie about the foyer ceiling, and Sherlock _would not_ come back into the attic for any reason.

 

~~~

 

John could count on one hand the number of times Sherlock had willingly abandoned a case for any reason other than crushing boredom, so the offer to return to the hotel shocked John into momentary silence.

“It’s obviously not _safe_ to be here,” Sherlock said in a tight whisper, looking sidelong at the splinters, dust, and jagged wood fragments littering the foyer floor. Poor Sophie was pacing around the edges of the debris, almost in tears as she stabbed her finger into the buttons on her mobile. She was calling her insurance company — again, she’d informed them in an exasperated tone. The woman was close to snapping.

After a deep breath, John shook his head. “No. We need to see this through,” he insisted, determined to help the Stewart family get through this growing nightmare before anyone else died.

So John and Sherlock searched the other downstairs wing while Sophie argued with her insurance company. Eventually, she brought them sandwiches, which helped John finally relax and take up the task of searching the rooms with something like enthusiasm. Somewhere along the line, his rewired brain had learned to associate meals with safety, probably because it meant some officer had decided no one would shoot them for the ten minutes it took to choke down dehydrated or reconstituted mush. Or maybe it was just that if he and Sherlock were sharing a meal, it meant they _weren’t_ jumping off roofs or running after angry serial killers, burglars, or cheating spouses armed with gardening tools — something that had happened not once but twice, though neither incident ever made it to the blog.

“It’s sad,” John said as he and Sherlock entered the last room in the wing. Like the others, it had been given over to ghostly shapes of furniture forgotten below bedsheets and dust covers.

“Hm?” Sherlock began to examine the walls, searching for concealed doorways, of which there had so far been quite a few.

“All of this.” John lifted the first sheet, trying to avoid raising a choking cloud of dust. He set it aside, revealing a use-scarred sideboard that had once held liquor bottles, judging by the moisture rings etched into the wood. “This house was probably beautiful, all full of life, and now it’s fading to nothing.”

“Everything has an ending.”

John flinched at the blunt, matter-of-fact tone. Glad he had his back turned to the room, he pulled open a drawer and said, “Doesn’t mean it has to go without a fight.” Finding nothing, he pushed the drawer shut and moved to the next one.

“I agree.”

Surprised, John looked back over his shoulder and saw Sherlock at the opposite wall, tracing a curling seam of wallpaper with his fingers. “Sorry?”

“Elizabeth of Bexley,” Sherlock answered, turning away from his examination of the wall.

Curious now, John straightened and leaned cautiously against the sideboard. “The little girl’s skull — the cold case Lestrade had you help with. God, that was... what, nine years ago?”

Sherlock nodded. “Forensic facial reconstruction. The art of rendering a human’s appearance from bones.” He turned, presenting his profile, as he touched the wallpaper seam again, watching how the paper rustled under his fingertips. “You can see the bones of the house. The flesh is stripped bare, rotting in places. But if you reconstruct it... The house isn’t dying at all. It’s neglected and abandoned, but the bones are still here.”

Fascinated by this new shift in Sherlock, John asked, “You grew up in a house like this, didn’t you?”

“Similar, yes. It was colder, though. More formal. Can you imagine Latham House producing Mycroft?” he asked with a derisive snort. “People _lived_ here. It’s not a museum.”

Perhaps it was the lingering effect of the adrenaline-laced fright in the attic, but John nodded in sudden understanding. In its current state of decay, the house was creepy enough without his ridiculous imagination running wild — thanks to these inexplicable murders, no doubt — but he could actually see what Sherlock was talking about. He could all too easily imagine ghostly residents going about their day-to-day lives here, talking and laughing, children running in the halls and playing on the furniture...

“It was a home,” he said quietly.

Sherlock nodded, turning back from his study of the walls, his eyes sharp once more. “Find anything?”

Back to business, then. John shook his head. “Not yet,” he said, and turned back to the sideboard, resuming his search.

 

~~~

 

“Estate agents wouldn’t work on a Saturday night.”

“Sorry?” John asked, following Sherlock into what felt like the fiftieth room to search, though surely there hadn’t been even half that many. It was large, occupying an entire corner of the second floor opposite the current family wing, though not quite as large as the master bedroom which they’d searched a good two hours ago.

Sherlock went into the middle of the room, glancing up at the electric light fixture that flickered ominously before settling into a steady glow. “I doubt anyone will die tonight — unless Sophie’s arranged to have an estate agent visit after hours.”

“God. I hope she’s smarter than that,” John said, looking across the room at the windows. “When did it get this late?”

Sherlock gave him an amused smile and went to start tapping against interior walls. “When did _you_ get so dusty?” he countered.

John paused on his way to the nearest armoire and looked down at himself. “Damn. Think there’s a laundry at the hotel?”

Sherlock laughed. “It suits you. Bloggers are the writers of the twenty-first century. That’s a dusty occupation.”

“I wouldn’t talk,” John countered, hiding his grin. He looked Sherlock over, making a point to stare at the streaks of dust on his once-pristine black trousers and the cobwebs on his sleeves. “For once, you don’t exactly look like you’ve stepped out of GQ, you know.”

“Just because I actually have a sense of current fashion trends —”

“A sense? A _sense?_ ” John asked, laughing. “You’re an hour or more in the shower. Your shampoo costs more than I make in a day, and you give half your clothes away to the Homeless Network twice a year so you have the excuse to buy more without filling up your closets. And speaking of —”

_“I do not!”_

“Speaking of,” John went on ruthlessly, his grin fierce, “don’t think I don’t know about the three pairs of dress shoes under my bed, because you have no room on the rack in your room. My room is not your overflow clothes closet.”

Sherlock huffed indignantly and banged his fist into the wall. “Get back to work, John,” he scolded.

Grinning, John returned to his task, feeling as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Maybe he was going mad, seeing ghosts and hallucinating footprints, but at least he had company in his madness. He’d probably been quietly going mad these last ten years; no one else would stick with Sherlock for that long.

John finished the armoire by the time Sherlock was done with the walls and had moved on to the desk in the corner. “Finding anything?” John asked, looking around for his next target. The chest of drawers near the bed might be a likely hiding spot, he decided.

Cold air shivered up over his arms as he stepped past the fireplace. He turned, thinking the flue had been left open, and saw his breath fogging the air as he exhaled. His heart skipped, but he didn’t feel a sense of _danger_ — only that he was being watched, which was ridiculous. Sherlock was rooting through the drawers, and they were alone in the room.

Weren’t they?

“Nothing,” Sherlock said, frustrated. “You know, we _could_ have her bring in an estate agent as bait.”

“No,” John said, struggling to keep his voice even as he looked warily around. Something caught his eye on the front of the fireplace, where the side piece on the left met the mantle. The woodwork was ornately carved, with long lines following the straight edges of the fireplace, softening into scrollwork medallions at the corners. The shadow was off, though, along the left medallion, as if it were deeper than it should have been. Curious, John put up a hand and felt the icy chill increase, brushing a thin line of cold along his palm.

“It’d be perfectly safe with you standing guard,” Sherlock said, still preoccupied with the desk.

John prodded along the side of the scrollwork. The wood was very smooth, the polish worn unevenly as though it had been rubbed thin in spots. He fitted his fingers against them and pressed gently. “We are _not_ using a person — Huh,” he said as the push dislodged the entire corner panel. It tipped free, apparently held in by tension alone, and he scrambled to catch it before it could fall, damaging the fragile woodcarvings.

Sherlock shoved the chair back from the desk and rushed over, eyes coming to life. “You found something.”

“Apparently,” John said, glancing at the back of the wooden piece. “Get your —” He cut off as Sherlock, already ahead of him, flicked his torch on and pointed it into the shadow.

“Well done,” Sherlock approved, clasping a hand over John’s shoulder as he leaned down to look inside. The touch seemed to drive away the ache that had been plaguing John on and off all day, and the icy chill that had sliced up his hand turned to a pleasant warmth. With a thoughtful hum, Sherlock turned off the torch and set it on the mantle.

“Careful,” John warned as Sherlock stuck his hand into the opening.

“There’s something — ah! Got it,” he said, carefully extracting a book.

The misshapen spine was bound in cracking brown leather, stained almost black in places. The cover was tan, with embossed black print that read _The Babylonian Story of the Deluge and the Epic of Gilgamesh by E.A. Wallis Budge_. The book was tied closed with a black cord. Instead of normal pages, it was stuffed with thin, folded slips of paper.

“That’s airmail paper,” John said, recognising the tissue-thin paper. “At least, some of it is.”

Sherlock quirked a brow in surprise. “Yes.” Gently, he carried the book to the desk, holding it with his fingertips. His eyes were practically glowing with enthusiasm as he scanned the cover and tipped his head to examine the haphazard papers that had taken the place of the book’s former pages.

“Wait,” John said, as Sherlock went to sit down. Sherlock watched with a bemused expression as John walked to his side and, without warning, frisked his trouser pockets. John found the expected latex gloves, pulled them out, and then tossed them onto the desk. “It’s easier when you’re standing.”

Sherlock smiled slyly and sat down. “I’ll remember that,” he said as he carefully transferred the book to his right hand. With his left, he swept the dust off the surface of the desk. Then he carefully set the book down so he could pull on the gloves.

John wanted to stay and look through the letters, but even he was feeling the press of time now, as they were finally nearing the end of the dauntless task of searching the entire house. The lack of useful information had been wearing on them both, and while this book might be useful, it might also be nothing more than any of the Stewart family letters or photo albums he and Sherlock had already found. There was no point in reading over Sherlock’s shoulder.

“I’ll get back to searching,” he finally said.

Without looking up from carefully untying the string, Sherlock made a sound of assent. Then he added, “If there are any more concealed documents, find them.”

As if John had some magical talent for it? Rolling his eyes, John said, “I’ll do that,” and resumed his search with the chest of drawers by the bed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Sunday, 23 September 1956**

Outside Latham Hall, the storm rattled the windows, causing the electric lights to flicker ominously before finally giving up the fight, plunging the hallway into darkness. Brilliant flashes of lightning threw stark spotlights over the gallery of portraits and statues to either side of Harold’s bedroom door.

Reggie pounded on the door, shouting over the thunder, “Harold! Wake up! Harold, damn you! I know you’re in there!”

After another minute of Reggie’s shouting, Harold finally unlocked the door and cracked it open to glare blearily out at Reggie. He raked a hand through brown hair that had gone long and unkempt. His eyes, shadowed and bloodshot, looked nearly black.

“Reggie, old boy,” he said with a bleak sort of cheeriness in his voice. “Hell of a storm, isn’t it?”

A hint of worry cut through Reggie’s fury, enough that he didn’t punch Harold on the spot. Instead, he shoved past Harold into the bedroom, and then recoiled at the mouldering, foetid stink that clogged the stale air.

“Christ, what are you doing in here?” he asked as lightning flashed outside again.

Harold grunted in response, “Nothing of interest.” He slammed the door shut, and a moment later, Reggie heard the mattress springs squeak as Harold threw himself onto the bed.

Carefully, Reggie navigated the room that had become unfamiliar and off-limits. He found the desk and set down everything he’d carried inside. He took his lighter from his trouser pocket, rolled the wheel, and looked around in the faint, golden light.

The desk was a mess not of papers but of candles, thick layers of wax drippings coating what looked like a scarf or throw draped over the top. A carved wooden mask, grotesque and demonic, leered up from where Reggie had placed it atop what looked like the taxidermied carcass of a white baby crocodile. One black candle, as thick as Reggie’s wrist, had been stuck atop what he prayed was the deformed skull of a monkey and not a human child.

“God, it’s worse than I thought,” he whispered. Hesitantly, he broke one of the candles free of its mooring and lit the wick. He considered lighting the others to drive back the darkness in the room, but his skin crawled at the thought.

In the glow of the solitary candle’s flame, Reggie saw what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics, angular shapes arranged in columns filling the page. He was no archaeologist, but he recognised artefacts from all over the world: a hammered copper pendant shaped like a thin-limbed man, a volcanic glass arrowhead, a chipped Indian pottery jar from America. In the corner of the desk, he saw a neatly coiled serpent’s skeleton, fine bones casting an eerie spider’s web of shadows as the candlelight flickered.

Reggie backed away from the desk, looking a bit desperately towards where his best friend had collapsed onto his bed. The sheets were a mess, pulled up at the corners, and the blanket was halfway over the footboard, caught up around one of the corner posts. Harold was still in the suit he’d been wearing two days ago, when he’d last come downstairs for dinner, right down to his shoes.

“How did this happen?” Reggie asked, his voice breaking. He went to the bed, recoiling at the stink of sweat and old laundry. When had Harold last allowed the servants in to change the sheets?

He set the candle down on the bedside table. Outside, lightning flashed again. Despite the rain, Reggie was tempted to throw open the windows in search of fresh air. Let everything get soaked. It could all be replaced.

No matter what, he had to get Harold out of here. Harold’s interest in voodoo and aboriginal traditions and whatever other nonsense had clearly gone too far.

Bracing one hand on the headboard, he leaned over, gently shaking Harold’s shoulder. “Harold. Harold, come on, old boy. Wake up.”

Harold groaned and rolled over. “Reggie?”

“Up you go,” Reggie prompted, pulling Harold to sit upright. He ducked and pulled Harold’s arm around his shoulders, saying, “Come on, Harold. Up, on your feet.”

After a clumsy moment’s fumbling, Reggie got Harold off the bed. Harold made it one step before he swung around in front of Reggie, throwing his other arm around Reggie’s neck to cling to him. “I can’t. Can’t do this anymore,” he mumbled against Reggie’s shoulder.

Guilt gnawed at Reggie. He thought about all the long nights he’d put in at the office, the weekends he’d spent in London with the family, the time he’d spent away from his best friend, thinking that everything was all right. Harold had always been an odd one, something of an intellectual, content with his books and travels, but clearly, those books had taken hold of his imagination.

“Let’s get you out of here, old boy,” Reggie said, struggling against Harold’s weight. He’d never succumbed to the creature comforts that had seduced Reggie into an admitted life of idle pleasure. While Reggie had got a bit portly, spending his time behind a desk or in a comfortable armchair by the radio, Harold had been out there in the world, hunting great beasts and hiking exotic mountains and travelling. He was solid muscle, and Reggie was breathless by the time he got Harold out of the bedroom and into the clean-smelling hallway.

Eleanor was waiting there, holding a battery-operated torch, her expression set with anger for only a moment as she took in Harold’s condition. Her eyes went wide and she reached out to help, asking, “What happened? What’s wrong? Does he need the doctor?”

Grimly, Reggie nodded. “Call and get him out here tonight. Don’t let him refuse, Ellie. I don’t care how bad the storm is — Harold needs help.”

 

~~~

 

**Sunday, 28 October 2012**

Gasping for breath, John clawed his way out of the darkness for what felt like the hundredth time, throwing off the blankets that tangled around his body as he tried to escape... something. The details were already fading, thankfully. His nightmares rarely followed him into wakefulness.

Sherlock’s impatient knock sounded again, and John realised that was what had helped him break free of the nightmare. Grateful for the interruption, he turned on the bedside lamp and staggered for the door, hardly even amazed that he could recognise Sherlock by his knock.

As soon as John unlocked and opened the door, Sherlock swept past him. He was still in the neat suit he’d put on as soon as they’d returned to the hotel, before John had forced him to the restaurant to pick at his dinner.

“We need to go back,” Sherlock announced. “You need to find —”

John shoved the door closed and threw the deadbolt and security bar, assuming that Sherlock needed him to listen to more ramblings. Then he turned, expecting to see that wide-eyed look of sudden understanding — there was no other reason for Sherlock to cut himself off like that — and started to ask, “What did —”

“Turn around,” Sherlock said, catching John’s left shoulder and giving him a push.

Startled, John threw up his hands in time to keep from hitting the door with his face. “Sherlock! What the hell?” Cold fingers prodded at the middle of his back. Startled, John arched away from the sudden pain with a yelp.

“You’re bruised,” Sherlock said worriedly.

“Fuck. Obviously!” John twisted around, though he knew there was no way he’d see a spot apparently in the middle of his back. “In case you forgot, we almost _died_ earlier,” he added tightly.

“John...” More gently, Sherlock put a hand over the centre of John’s back. “Did someone...”

“What?” John snapped, caught up in the lingering traces of nightmares and his renewed memories of Sherlock’s near-fall. Having Sherlock this close, touching bare skin, only served to confuse John’s state of mind that much more.

Sherlock moved his hand down, fingers dragging, and John tensed up, trying not to shiver visibly. “The bruise is shaped like a handprint,” Sherlock said in a clinical tone, at odds with his uncharacteristically gentle touch.

A handprint? That wasn’t possible. He’d had a nightmare. He hadn’t been assaulted —

_Harold Latham,_ John thought, heart leaping to his throat as he remembered impossibly defying gravity, falling forward and not back into the hole in the attic floor.

_As though something had pushed him safely away._

He pulled free of Sherlock’s hold and went to the vanity. He flipped on the light and twisted to try and see his back in the mirror over the sink. “God,” he whispered, seeing the dark purple bruise out of the corner of his eye, five distinct fingers over a palm. It wasn’t possible, the medically trained part of his mind told him. An impact hard enough to leave this sort of bruise would have fractured bones, damaged his spine... If nothing else, he would have _noticed_.

Sherlock walked up beside him and set down the book John had found in the fireplace earlier. “How did this happen?”

Twisting the other way to see if there were any more marks on his back, John considered telling Sherlock what he’d seen in the attic, before realising he couldn’t. What was he supposed to say? That the murderer was dressing up in period military costume and had saved them, or that a ghost had tried to stop Sherlock from falling to his death and then helped save John from that same fate?

“The attic was full of all sorts of rubbish. I must have fallen on something,” John finally said, turning away. He dipped his shoulder out of Sherlock’s reach, knowing Sherlock would like nothing more than to examine the bruise in minute detail — he was like that — and went back to his bed. “Something on your mind?”

He could feel Sherlock’s unhappy glare follow him across the room. Though John now had even less desire to try and sleep, he got under the covers and laid down on his side. Almost a full minute passed before Sherlock sighed, picked up the book, and walked after John. He sat down on the edge of the bed and put the book on the blanket.

“There’s nothing here,” he said, though he lacked the enthusiasm that had been in his voice earlier, when he’d declared the need to return to Latham Hall. “It’s all unsent letters from Harold Latham to Reginald Stewart, and some remnant pages original to the book.”

“Really?” John got an arm out from under the blankets, glad for the excuse not to pretend to go back to sleep, and gently opened the book. The letters inside were folded to fit into the book, as though they’d never been intended to go into an envelope. The airmail paper was fragile and thin, and most sheets were cracked at one edge from the cord that had been used to tie the book closed.

“It seems there was some” — Sherlock waved a hand — “one-sided _relationship_ between them.”

Startled, John froze in the act of opening the first letter. Sherlock’s back was turned, so John couldn’t see his expression. Was the sharp, businesslike tone of voice his way of warning John away from further mention of this ‘one-sided relationship’?

“That... doesn’t mean he — So there was nothing about a child?” John asked uncomfortably, trying to focus on the case.

“Nothing. It seems Latham had no interest in intimacy with anyone else.” Sherlock turned enough for John to see a hint of his profile as he glanced down at the book. “The earliest letters had hints of passing relationships, without ever specifying a name or gender, always accompanied by an apology for being unfaithful. Later —”

“Stop,” John interrupted, picking up the book, trying not to let his hands shake too much. This was all too close to _his_ life, and he swore that if Sherlock was just making this up to make some sort of point, he would shoot him.

Sherlock twisted around to look back at him. “I’m only —”

“You hate it when people... What’d you call it? Taint your first impressions?” When Sherlock nodded, baffled, John continued, “So stop doing it to me. Let me read this for myself. You go get some sleep. I know you barely slept last night.”

“If we go back —”

“Then we’ll piss off our client and get thrown off the case. It’s, what, three in the morning?”

Sullenly, Sherlock said, “Four.”

“Fine. Four hours to read, shower, and have breakfast — which we are _not_ skipping. And then we’ll call her first. It’s Sunday, so she might well be going to church.”

Sherlock sighed, exasperated. “Fine. No one was murdered yesterday, so we can assume the trend will continue today, so long as she doesn’t bring in another estate agent,” he said unhappily.

“It’s Sunday,” John repeated. “No estate agents today.” He gave Sherlock a little push to get him off the bed and moving. He followed, herding Sherlock out of the room. “Sleep. I’ll know if you don’t.”

“The bruise —”

“Is fine,” John interrupted, opening the door for Sherlock.

Sherlock paused in the doorway, looking back at John, his expression unreadable and masked. “You should put some ice on it,” he finally said.

John relaxed a bit and nodded, trying not to read too much into the uncharacteristic consideration. “I will, thanks. Now go to bed,” he ordered, closing the door. To emphasise his point, he threw the deadbolt and security bar. After a moment, he heard Sherlock’s footsteps head off, in the direction of the room next door.

Exhaling shakily, John turned and looked across the room at the book on his bed. Everything about this case had stopped making sense days ago, when he’d first found the bootprint. And Christ, that print might well have been from a _military_ boot — just like the ones that went with a World War II uniform.

Maybe this whole case was all an intricate nightmare. Maybe he was in hospital, dying, and this was his brain’s last attempt to cling to life. Nothing else made sense.

He stared at the book, wondering if he really wanted to read the letters. Sherlock had been unaffected, but he disdained all emotional entanglements and sentiment. How often had John heard Sherlock’s speech on the brain chemistry that people called ‘love’ and used as an excuse to terrorise or murder one another?

Really, John didn’t know if he had it in him to live through someone else’s emotional pain. His own was more than enough for a lifetime.

Deciding to give up on sleep, he went past the vanity and into the small bathroom, where he started the shower. He’d wake up and make a pot of bad hotel room coffee, and he’d agonize the whole time about the book, though he knew he’d read it, in the end. Sherlock was brilliant at the science and psychology of their cases, but John was the one who provided the insight into irrational, emotional human behavior. There was a very good chance that if these letters really were full of feelings and not facts, it would be John, not Sherlock, who found something important buried in them.

 

~~~

 

The night had turned windy, with sporadic raindrops pelting down as a prelude to an icy rain that would start within the hour. Sherlock cupped a hand around the cigarette to light it, inhaled deeply, and paced through the carpark.

He and John had returned to the hotel just before seven. They’d gone upstairs, to their separate rooms, but not thirty minutes later, John had dragged Sherlock out of his room and downstairs, to the so-called restaurant. He’d forced Sherlock to endure hotel cuisine, and hadn’t let Sherlock get to reading until he’d cleared half his plate of a revolting excuse for a steak and something that might have been potatoes au gratin in a previous life, before being cremated and rehydrated.

Then, John had been alone for eight hours — from eight till four, when Sherlock had finally finished reading. Eight hours was more than enough time for him to... to what? To go to a bar, most likely packed on a chilly Saturday night, and find company? Sherlock hadn’t heard John leave, but John was fully capable of stealth when he chose — better at it, in fact, than Sherlock himself was.

No, Sherlock finally decided. John had stopped even casually dating three years ago, and rarely bothered to find company for a one-night stand. There was no reason for him to do so last night. In fact, experience told Sherlock that the incident in the attic would keep John close by, where he could feel, however irrationally, that he was protecting Sherlock through proximity alone, despite having a wall and two locked doors between their rooms.

So, perhaps he’d gone out for some other reason — maybe a bar, for a drink, or maybe to a shop to pick up something. The bruise could have been from a fight. Couldn’t it? Possibly. Unlikely, though.

Sherlock shook his head and took another drag, willing the nicotine to help him think. Briefly, he tried to wrench his mind back to the case, but the sight of the bruise was etched into his memory. If John had been struck in a fight, the bruise would have a much more familiar shape; they’d investigated more than enough corpses bruised by punches, after all.

Finally, Sherlock pulled his mobile from his pocket and dialled. After three rings, a woman’s voice sleepily answered, “Doctor Creiff.”

“Molly, it’s Sherlock. I need your help.”

She sighed over the sound of a man’s sleepy murmur. “Sherlock, it’s not even five in the morning. You can’t call at this hour. You’ll wake the baby.”

“John’s been hurt.”

“Oh, my god,” she said, abruptly fully awake. “No, honey, something happened to John Watson. Sherlock, what happened?”

Sherlock took another drag off the cigarette. “I don’t know. There’s —”

“Is he in hospital? Where are you?”

“It’s a bruise,” Sherlock snapped. “I need —”

“A bruise?”

“Stop interrupting!”

“You called me at five in the morning _for a bruise?_ ”

Sherlock took a deep breath of smoke and damp air, moving more quickly towards the shelter of the hotel entryway as the rain finally began to pick up. “Molly. He has a bruise, centre of his back, with distinct finger-marks. Colouration is vivid purple, darker at the fingertips and crown and base of the palm.”

“Oh. Um, okay,” she said, sounding puzzled. “How difficult is it for him to walk? Is his breathing impaired?”

“That’s what I don’t understand.” Sherlock exhaled a line of smoke and glared up at the dark, cloudy sky beyond the overhang near the hotel’s front doors. “No impaired mobility or breathing at all. He wasn’t even _aware_ of it until I touched it. He’d been sleeping.”

“What? He was bruised in —” She cut off. “Um... was he — I mean, was he sleeping alone, or were you...”

Sherlock ignored the subtle innuendo and firmly pushed aside the mental images it created. “He was alone,” he said, focusing on the technical aspects of the bruising. “I need to know what could cause that type of dark surface bruising without any observable impact on the bones or muscle tissue.”

“Nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“Damn,” Sherlock muttered, closing his eyes. He took another drag, and then trapped his mobile against his shoulder so he could light another cigarette off the butt. “Repeated strikes?” he asked, struggling for any explanation — though the behavioural side of that image was even worse than thinking John had been in a fight.

“Maybe,” Molly said, drawing the word out sceptically. “Though if the bruise was that distinct, every blow would need precisely the same placement, which is almost impossible, once you’re involving enough sort of force to eventually break enough capillaries. And then, you know...” She laughed nervously. “There’s the fact that he’d probably kill anyone who tried, knowing John.”

Sherlock gritted his teeth and pitched away the cigarette butt, hissing in a breath of smoke. He took the phone in his hand again and asked, “Could it have been caused by a fall?”

“A fall?”

“There was an... incident. He pulled me out of the way of something, and we both fell over a settee and onto the floor.”

“Um,” she said eloquently. “You, uh... I... Maybe? You mean, as if he fell on _your_ hand?”

Sherlock had been vaguely thinking that, but hearing her say it made him realise how absurd that was. “Of course not. My hand would be broken from that sort of force,” he said scathingly. “An object, perhaps. The settee was under a dust cover, but most likely had decorative woodwork elements around the upholstery.”

“Shaped like hands? Where were you, one of those haunted houses?”

Sherlock sighed, trying to be irritated at her flippancy, but even he realised the absurdity of the entire phone call. “If you think of anything that could cause a deep bruise that _didn’t_ harm the muscle or skeletal structures below, text me.”

“Of course. Make sure he puts ice on it, and takes something for the pain,” she advised, “though I’m sure he knows that already.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Give him my love. And you two need to come over for dinner —”

“After the case. Thank you,” he repeated, and hung up.

He dropped the mobile back into his jacket pocket, shivering at the damp wind, and finished the cigarette quickly. Perhaps John was right. Perhaps he needed to sleep. His mind was obviously blunted by this case and fatigue. But how could he be certain that John wouldn’t... wouldn’t what? Go out and get into a fight? _Allow_ someone to hurt him?

No. That was irrational, and John was never irrational. Emotional, yes, and compassionate, caring, all those things, but not irrational. Whatever he’d done, he had some reason — perhaps something related to the case, something he wanted to investigate on his own. Sherlock just had to trust that John knew what he was doing.

 

~~~

 

John didn’t get through a third of the letters before he had to push them all aside to catch his breath. Sherlock’s coldly logical dismissal had done nothing to prepare John for the emotional reality poured out in the letters.

In the past, he’d accused Sherlock of being a bloody machine, but never really believed it. He’d seen the compassion in Sherlock’s eyes and actions, the way he’d push himself to exhaustion not just to solve a puzzle but to help a client in need. He’d even witnessed it when Sherlock had recounted the steps he’d taken to dismantle Moriarty’s criminal network, his carefully chosen words at odd with the faintest tremor in his voice.

So how could Sherlock have ignored the pain in Harold’s writing? Dismissed it so casually that he hadn’t even mentioned it in passing?

Was this how Harold Latham had lived, surviving day-to-day with a hole inside him as he watched his love build a life and a family with someone else? John took no comfort from the thought that Sherlock was more likely to sprout wings and fly off than he was to marry.

Some of the book’s original pages remained, starting with a numbered lists of lines from _The Legend as Told by Uta-Napishtim_. John skimmed through it but recognised nothing until the bottom of the reverse side of the page, titled _The Epic of Gilgamish_. The rest of the book was apparently a translation of tablets bearing the original story of Gilgamesh (which he was fairly certain was the proper modern spelling).

After a few more pages, he paused to read:

> _In this lament he calls Enkidu his brave friend and the “panther of the desert,” and refers to their hunts in the mountains, and to their slaughter of the bull of heaven, and to the overthrow of Khumbaba in the forest of cedar, and then he asks him:_
> 
> _“What kind of sleep is this which hath laid hold upon thee? Thou starest out blankly and hearest me not!”_
> 
> _But Enkidu moved not, and when Gilgamish touched his breast his heart was still. Then laying a covering over him as carefully as if he had been his bride, he turned away from the dead body and in his grief roared like a raging lion and like a lioness robbed of her whelps._

John quickly turned away, remembering a broken, bloody body on the sidewalk. He picked up the last of the letters in the pile, more to have something to do with his hands, and unfolded the tissue-thin paper.

> _28 Oct 1956_
> 
> _My dearest Reggie,_
> 
> _For ten years, I have watched you and Eleanor build a beautiful family — the family I know I will never have. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. Now that I know you are, I can finally try to find some peace for myself._
> 
> _I can no longer watch and not have. I’ve come to love Eleanor as a sister, but every night, when you leave my side to go to share her bed, I hate her a little bit more for taking you away, even though you were never mine at all._
> 
> _I will always be with you. And you will never know I’m there, which is as it should be. You have your family. Take care of them and love them, and know that they are more fortunate than any other family has ever been, because they have you._
> 
> _I love you. I will always love you._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _Harold_

“Oh, Christ. Fucking Christ,” John whispered, closing his eyes tightly and taking deep breaths. Was this where he would be in a matter of years? Hell, was he already there, with his blog immortalising Sherlock’s brilliance, neglecting his own life to live in the shadow of the person he loved, forever unnoticed, eclipsed by the Work that consumed Sherlock’s whole world.

John abandoned the desk and paced across the room, needing to get up, to move, to _do_ something that wasn’t thinking about Sherlock bloody Holmes and just how thoroughly he’d trapped John in this private little hell.

This case... this case was driving him mad. He was finally losing control of his feelings for Sherlock, and if he didn’t step back and find his distance, he’d end up confessing everything to Sherlock, which would end it all. Sherlock grudgingly tolerated distant, motherly affection from Mrs. Hudson, and let no one else close. John was his friend, his colleague, and his doctor, and if he even so much as hinted at wanting anything more, it would all fall apart.

He had to get out.

He put on socks and his trainers as though on autopilot, thinking only of escape, of resuming his old habit of long walks to help clear his head. He tried not to think of how many miles he’d walked every day that Sherlock had been gone, and bitterly remembered how the few friends who saw him had complimented him on being in the best shape of his life because of them.

Swearing viciously under his breath, he snatched up his jacket and left without a backward glance.

 

~~~

 

Large coffee, steamed milk, two sugars, chocolate shavings and a chocolate-chip breakfast muffin: comfort food. Paracetamol: possibly redundant, given John’s habit of packing a medical kit including sutures and emergency doses of epinephrine, morphine, and adrenaline. An ice bucket, with ice but for some stupid bloody reason _without_ a handle, which meant Sherlock was forced to kick John’s door instead of knocking.

Then, after being greeted with silence, he kicked again. For good measure, he called, “John!”

When there was no answer, he set down the cardboard coffee tray and poorly designed ice bucket. The electronic controls locked the room doors automatically, but he’d acquired a keycard that would get him in if John had neglected to lock the deadbolt and security bar. Since John always was security-conscious, Sherlock had no expectation of actually being able to get into the hotel room short of going over his balcony, across a ledge, and onto John’s balcony — something he wouldn’t do in anything other than a life-or-death emergency — but the _click_ of the automatic lock disengaging would get John’s attention, even if he was sleeping.

But the light turned green, the lock clicked, and the door opened under the weight of Sherlock’s hand on the latch.

John was out. He had to be, or the door would be fully locked.

Sherlock retrieved the breakfast and ice bucket and carried everything into the room. The bedspread had been thrown over the sheets, though John hadn’t bothered to actually make the bed. Harold Latham’s journal of letters was open on the desk. The letters were in a messy stack to one side, and the book had been opened to the original pages remaining at the back.

Searching the room, Sherlock found slightly damp towels in the bathroom, a dry toothbrush on the vanity countertop, and John’s boxers from last night in the mesh bag he used for dirty laundry while travelling. The safety razor bore a hint of stubble, but the shaving cream hadn’t been used for the last twelve hours or more. John had showered, most likely right after he’d sent Sherlock away to sleep. He’d dressed. He’d read Harold Latham’s unsent letters.

And then, he’d left.

Wondering if John had simply gone to get his own coffee, Sherlock send him a quick text:

_Where are you? SH_

Almost immediately, John’s phone buzzed on the bedside table. Sherlock stared at it, his thoughts momentarily stalled as he processed an impossible truth: John had left without his mobile.

Then Sherlock’s brief paralysis broke. He lunged for the bed, throwing aside the pillows in search of John’s gun. He didn’t find it, which meant John most likely had it.

Which meant what?

Sherlock sat on the disarrayed bed, looking around the room, turning over different scenarios in his head. There was no sign of violence, thankfully, or he might have thought John had been taken by force, most likely by whomever was behind the murders at Latham Hall. They’d made no attempt to hide their investigation, after all.

But if he’d left of his own accord, he would’ve taken his phone. He always remembered his mobile. A hundred times in the past, John had berated Sherlock for leaving his mobile behind when something caught his attention. A means of communication, John always said, was more important than a weapon.

Distraction. Distress. Physical pain. Sherlock thought about the bruise, but his eye fell on the journal taken from Latham House. John wouldn’t give in to physical pain, and if he’d gone to hospital in some late-occurring trauma, he would have contacted Sherlock. So, this was something more ephemeral. Emotional.

He went to the desk and examined everything. The letter on top was the final letter, dated on this date — the twenty-eighth of October — fifty-six years ago. It was an unsent love letter with disturbing overtones. Had Sherlock found the modern version of this letter, he would have immediately identified the author as a potential suspect for the murders of the estate agents. This was love crossing into obsession.

Had John been empathising with Harold Latham? John had incredible insight into the emotional state of strangers, which made him an invaluable buffer between Sherlock and the murky ways of humanity. John was always far more perceptive about emotions than Sherlock ever had been, picking up the subtlest clues about ephemeral feelings that defied logic — love, loyalty, trust.

Sherlock froze in the act of reaching for the letter to move it aside. Could John have seen the truth of Sherlock’s feelings for him? Did John _know?_ He couldn’t know. He couldn’t possibly know. Sherlock was _expert_ at concealing things from John. If John knew, he would have said something. Unless his silence was an attempt to politely allow Sherlock to _think_ his deception was successful — a sort of ‘let’s all ignore it until it goes away’ choice.

Since Sherlock’s return, John had carefully avoided denying that they were a couple, as though worried about allowing _any_ distance to come between them — as if he’d prefer to let others think they were together if it meant he could have Sherlock close enough to keep him safe. Or had he been waiting for Sherlock to correct their assumptions? For the last few years, had he been coping with a slow-building bitterness at Sherlock’s casual disregard of what people assumed about them?

Had Sherlock revealed his feelings through his own inaction?

Panic. Accelerated respiration and heartbeat. If John knew, and if this abrupt departure was his emotional reaction — a clear denial, if Sherlock had ever seen one — then John might well _leave_. They would no longer laugh at the world’s way of assuming they were a couple, no matter what Sherlock might secretly want. Suddenly it would become uncomfortable, with Sherlock’s emotions flayed raw and exposed, and no apology would ever repair the damage that would do to their friendship.

Suddenly furious with himself, Sherlock balled up the letter and threw it, wishing he’d really paid attention when he’d been reading the journal, rather than simply skimming it for any sign of a bastard heir Harold Latham might have sired. He never would have given the journal to John. He would’ve burned it on the damned balcony before letting John see it.

He looked back down, his eyes drawn to the book, which was opened to the myth of Gilgamesh and Enkidu — Gilgamesh, the great hero who saw all, learned all, and understood all the hidden mysteries of the world, and Enkidu, the man made by the gods to be his rival, his opposite in all things, but who ended up being his dearest friend and truest love.

The specific page detailed Enkidu’s death, and Gilgamesh’s reaction upon finding his body.

Sherlock sat down hard enough to roll the desk chair back a few inches. He was an idiot. An absolute idiot! His schooling had been filled with so much classical education that he couldn’t possibly delete it all. He _knew_ this myth, and he’d entirely disregarded its significance, except to idly note that the book dated back to 1929 and was probably therefore the original hiding place for all these letters.

Even if the letters hadn’t drawn John to some terrible, although entirely accurate conclusion, this would have brought back memories that still bled deep inside them both. It was absolutely irresponsible of Sherlock to ever have allowed John to see this.

_Time,_ he thought, remembering those first weeks after his return, when John had constantly said he needed time. Perhaps that was what John needed now. He’d left, intentionally without leaving a message or taking his mobile, which meant he needed to be alone with his thoughts.

He’d come back.

As Sherlock gathered up the letters and the book, he told himself that John would come back. He always did, and this time was no different.


	9. Chapter 9

**Monday, 24 September 1956**

“Come in!” Reggie shouted at the first knock on his study door. He stubbed out his cigarette and rose, looking desperately to Dr. Patterson. The man had been the Stewart family doctor for four years now, and Reggie had come to rely on his steady, calm presence any time one of the children had a fever or cough, or when Ellie had first started getting her headaches. But Harold had always been the very picture of health, save for when his drinking got out of hand, and then all he needed was some good, strong coffee and a cigar, and he’d be right as rain.

“He’s fine,” Dr. Patterson said, waving Reggie back into his seat.

“Oh, thank Christ.” Reggie sank down and shook another cigarette out of the pack, before offering one to Dr. Patterson.

He accepted with a nod of thanks, allowed Reggie to light it, and then sat down opposite him. “I shouldn’t be discussing this with anyone but family, but I know you’re all he’s got.”

“Whatever I can do to help him —”

“First, mind if I ask a question or two?”

“Anything.”

Patterson nodded, leaning back with the cigarette between his lips. He set a small notebook on the edge of the desk and took a pen from his pocket. “Have you noticed him in this condition before?”

“No, never, or I would’ve called at once,” Reggie answered immediately. “What _caused_ —”

“We’ll get to that.” Patterson took the cigarette in his fingers and gave Reggie a brief, reassuring smile. “It seems he drank an infusion of mushrooms and herbs — some sort of tea, though like none I’ve ever seen before.”

Wincing, Reggie closed his eyes. “Probably some damned folk remedy from deepest Africa or some other such nonsense.”

“Well, it could’ve killed him. You saved his life, Mr. Stewart.” Patterson looked up from his notes. “You said you found him like this in his bedroom...”

“I went in there to have a word with him about his collection of bloody voodoo artefacts,” Reggie said bitterly. “Phillip got into a chest of the stuff, and crept into Marie’s bedroom last night. Scared the poor girl half to death. She was so scared of monsters under her bed, she wouldn’t go to sleep until Ellie made her a hot toddy. I left Ellie to sort out Marie, sent Phillip to bed, and then went to have a talk with Harold.”

“Fortunate that you did,” Patterson approved, making a note in his book. “If Marie still can’t sleep in a couple of days, call my office. We’ll give you something a bit stronger to help her.”

“Thanks.” Reggie took a deep breath of smoke and exhaled it in a thin stream. “And Harold?”

Patterson sighed, scratching at his hair with the back of his pen. “It goes without saying that he’s got to stop. No more of these herbal remedies or other mumbo-jumbo. He’s not in immediate danger, but these things... well, they can take root in the brain, change a man’s behaviour.”

“What?” Reggie asked worriedly.

Patterson nodded. “It all comes down to the brain, Mr. Stewart. All this superstitious nonsense about magic and voodoo is just a primitive way of explaining things we’re only now exploring through neuroscience. There’s actually some very new research on this from a doctor in New York, Sandor Rado. He calls it schizotypal personality disorder.”

Reggie’s breath caught. “That sounds —”

“It sound worse than it is,” Patterson said soothingly. “It’s a very mild disorder, really. Certain social anxieties — Harold’s habit of withdrawing from parties and gatherings. His interest in primitive superstitions — that’s a manifestation of his search for patterns and greater meanings in random events. It’s very manageable, in Mr. Latham’s case. Fortunately, I think we’ve caught this early enough that we won’t need to resort to any pharmacology or electroshock therapy.”

“My God!”

Patterson leaned over to the ashtray and put out his cigarette. “I said we’re in time, Mr. Stewart. Just keep an eye on him. He’s out of the woods now —”

“I can’t,” Reggie interrupted, flinching with guilt. “Ellie and I — it’s our tenth wedding anniversary next month. We’re going to Paris to celebrate, in three weeks.”

“Three weeks... Well, in three weeks, we should have a better idea of if he’ll need to be hospitalised, or if he’s in his right mind.”

 

~~~

 

**Monday, 29 October 2012**

John returned just after ten at night, closing his door gently, rather than allowing it to slam. Lying in the dark next door, Sherlock listened to John’s movements through the hotel room. He showered, which he did only rarely in the evening, and his shower was long enough that he was most likely warming up after being out in the rain. His shoulder had been intermittently bothering him over the past two days, and the hot water was probably soothing. After the shower, John brushed his teeth, which meant he’d already had dinner at some point. Then he got into bed with no more than the usual fuss, which meant the bruise wasn’t hurting enough to impair his movement.

Through the rest of the night, Sherlock listened as John tossed and turned and woke himself with nightmares more frequently than usual, and for the first time, Sherlock wondered what he should do. John and Mycroft both thought they’d cleverly kept secret their code of Sherlock’s ‘danger nights’, when they felt he was at risk of reverting to chemical stimulants or risking his life. They had various schemes intended to ‘manage’ him — cigarettes, distractions, irritating attempts to talk about feelings.

What did Sherlock have to fall back on when John was having a ‘danger night’? Nothing. It _didn’t happen_. Not like this. John was steady, stable, eternal. It was Sherlock who was erratic, unpredictable, and self-destructive, not John.

He supposed John had endured this sort of emotional compromise in the days following Sherlock’s faked suicide, but he’d tried not to think about it. At first, he’d had to focus on the task at hand. Later, he’d told himself that John had coped. He’d survived the emotional trauma without Sherlock’s help.

Now, Sherlock had no idea how to help without the risk of making things worse and driving John away for good.

So he lay there, trying to focus on data, counting the seconds and minutes of John’s REM cycles, listening to the squeak of the mattress every time John awoke when the terror in his own mind became too much to endure. Sherlock didn’t even pretend to think about the case. He didn’t give a damn about the case anymore. Only John mattered, and as dawn approached, Sherlock began to wonder if he’d break and call Mycroft to help, because he still had no answers.

After a time, he heard the mattress again, followed by the loud rustle and snap of the blankets as John shook them out. After another minute, he heard the shower come on. John was up for the day.

Quickly, Sherlock went to shower, berating himself for not having already done so. He didn’t want John to leave without him, and after the fastest shower in his life, Sherlock threw on the first suit he grabbed from the closet with no mind towards coordinating any of the pieces.

He reached the hallway just as John emerged from the room next door. Sherlock stared, one hand on his door, holding it open a few inches. John looked... _normal_. His trainers — the only pair he’d brought with him — were splattered with mud and caked with dirt along the edges, the once-white laces stained light brown, but otherwise he was as neatly turned-out as he ever was. He wore a maroon jumper Mrs. Hudson had given him for his birthday over a white button-down shirt and a fresh pair of blue jeans. He’d shaved, and though he’d slept poorly, the shadows under his eyes were barely visible.

“Morning,” John said as though nothing at all had happened yesterday.

Sherlock lowered his hand, and his door closed with a loud bang, followed by a mechanical whirr as the automatic keycard lock engaged.

“Clear up the mystery, or are we back to the Hall today?” John asked into the silence.

So, they were pretending nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Sherlock didn’t know if he should be relieved or more worried.

“Back to the Hall,” he said, for lack of any better ideas.

“Right. Breakfast first,” John ordered, tipping his head to beckon Sherlock after him as he started for the lift.

Without argument, Sherlock followed, breathing easier as he began to accept that no matter what John had assumed, he apparently wasn’t leaving. For now, that was good enough.

 

~~~

 

The only thing that allowed John to get through breakfast was his absolute certainty that Sherlock wouldn’t mention John’s disappearance yesterday, except perhaps to complain in passing that he’d had to get his own pen or mobile or gloves out of his pockets. There was a very good chance that Sherlock hadn’t even noticed. After all, John had been gone for fourteen hours, not three days, and Sherlock had entirely blanked out more than one long weekend John had taken away from 221B.

So John simply pretended yesterday didn’t exist, ate his breakfast, and kept Sherlock from giving himself a sugar overdose, all per normal. Sherlock didn’t say a word, but John was used to his silence as well. In fact, it was relaxing to think that maybe Sherlock had learned something of value yesterday. The sooner they could close this case, the sooner John wouldn’t have to think about poor Harold Latham and draw comparisons to his own bloody situation.

The cab dropped them off at Latham Hall just before nine, pulling up behind a medical transport van. Sophie was on the steps, standing under an umbrella beside a young man who John assumed to be Ethan Stewart. He looked only a year or two older than Sophie and seemed in good spirits for someone who’d spent nearly a week in jail, despite the dark circles under his eyes.

“I suppose they found a judge,” Sherlock murmured as he put up his collar and got out of the cab.

“Good.” John paid the driver, went out into the rain, and walked with Sherlock to the front doors.

Sophie was smiling sadly. “Ethan, this is Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, Dr. Watson.”

“Friend,” Sherlock corrected without looking towards John as he shook Ethan’s hand.

Thrown by the correction, John hesitated awkwardly for a moment before he managed to smile. “Welcome back,” he told Ethan.

“Thanks to both of you,” Ethan said, with a heartfelt smile. “Without you, I’d still be there, I’m certain.”

“Yes, then we’ll just continue where we left off,” Sherlock interrupted, looking past the reunited couple to the house, a bloodhound eager to pick up the trail once more.

“Mr. Stewart, if we could speak to your great-grandfather, we just have a couple of questions,” John requested, glancing at Sherlock. He should have asked earlier if Sherlock had satisfied his curiosity about bastards on the Stewart side of the family.

After an instant, Sherlock added, “That would be very helpful, yes.”

“Well, he’s going to be leaving soon,” Ethan said uncertainly, glancing at the medical transport, where the orderlies were lowering a wheelchair lift out of the side of the van.

“Best to move along, then,” Sherlock said, and headed past the couple. “Come along, John. Shouldn’t keep the elder Mr. Stewart waiting.”

Before Ethan and Sophie could protest, Sherlock had disappeared into the house, leaving John to jog along behind him. Sophie must have called in a cleaning crew again. The grand foyer was free of most of the debris from the collapsed attic floor, though there were a couple of ladders and boards set up to cordon off the area under the hole.

Trying not to look too closely, John unzipped his jacket and kept his attention on Sherlock. “I take it you didn’t discover anything useful yesterday?”

Sherlock gave him an odd look. “No,” was all he said. He turned down the hall to the family wing, pausing to check the parlour before he continued towards the bedrooms.

John wanted to ask what Sherlock had been doing yesterday. Sophie hadn’t asked about John’s absence, which meant Sherlock might not have even come to the house. The book had been missing from John’s room, so had Sherlock been rereading it all day?

They turned the corner and walked in silence past Sophie and Ethan’s bedroom. John stopped Sherlock from walking into Reginald’s room, saying, “He’s over ninety, Sherlock. Let me do the talking.”

“I do have an entire family, John,” Sherlock scolded. “And some of them are even more delicate than Mycroft.”

“And _that_ is why we don’t allow you to speak to the public,” John said, knocking gently on the door. He pushed it open and peeked inside, calling, “Mr. Stewart?”

Reginald was standing shakily near his wheelchair, leaning on his cane with one hand. With the other, he was reaching up onto a shelf for a photograph. “Who are you?” he asked, squinting over at John.

“We met the other day, sir. Dr. John Watson. My friend wanted to meet you,” he said a bit nervously, despite Sherlock’s earlier correction to Ethan and Sophie.

“He’s a tall one. Good. Get this thing down,” Reginald ordered, and sat down in the wheelchair with a deep sigh.

John nudged Sherlock to get moving. “How are you this morning?” John asked, looking Reginald over. He was dressed in neat trousers and a warm jumper over a shirt, rather than pyjamas, and seemed aware of his surroundings.

“How do you think?” Reginald snapped, letting his cane fall against the bookshelf with a clatter. He looked to Sherlock, saying, “That one — the one with all of us.”

Sherlock took down an old black and white photograph showing a dozen or so soldiers, though he didn’t hand it over immediately. “Is this Harold Latham?” he asked, indicating one of the soldiers.

Reginald leaned forward and carefully took hold of the frame with both hands. “We were so young then,” he said sadly. “He never resented my promotion, either.”

“And after the War,” Sherlock said, “he invited you to live here?”

John shot Sherlock a warning look, but Reginald didn’t seem upset by the question. He smiled and nodded, saying, “On our wedding night. We’d planned to go back to London, only housing there... you’re too young to remember the bombing.” He peered up at Sherlock and John. “He said we should stay — that Latham Hall needed a family, not poor Harold all alone here. He never did marry.”

“‘We’ being you and your wife?” Sherlock pressed.

Reginald’s smile softened. He reached into a side pocket of the wheelchair and rattled through the contents before he pulled out another photograph, and placed the picture of the soldiers inside. “Eleanor, but I called her Ellie. Isn’t she lovely?” he asked, showing the picture. “I lost her in eighty-one.”

The loss in Reginald’s voice was heartbreaking to hear, even without knowing what John did about Harold’s feelings. “So, you and Harold stayed close after the wedding?”

“Oh, yes. He was there when both my children were born.” He sighed and ran his fingers over the picture glass. “Today’s the twenty-ninth, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Sherlock answered, glancing questioningly at John.

Reginald nodded, slipping Eleanor’s picture into the pocket with the others. “Get my coat,” he said, pointing to a heavy overcoat draped over the end of the bed. It was thick wool with a fur collar, reminiscent of Sherlock’s Belstaff, though it looked vintage.

When Sherlock didn’t move, John went to get the coat. Reginald pushed up out of his wheelchair, standing unsteadily while John helped him into the coat, and then picked up the cane.

“Leave that,” Reginald said, sounding disgusted. “They said they’d have a new one for me. Something about safety regulations. Laws about walking sticks.” He waved a hand imperiously at Sherlock and pressed a control stick on the wheelchair. The motor kicked in, and the chair moved forward.

Sherlock stepped aside and turned his attention to the bookshelf. John caught his arm and whispered, “No!” He wasn’t about to allow Sherlock to search the old man’s room before he’d even left the house.

They caught up with Reginald in the hall, where he’d turned left and headed for the dining room, rather than turning towards the foyer. “Sir? Mr. Stewart?” John called, raising his voice. “Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving, aren’t I?” Reginald asked sharply.

“By the long route, yes,” Sherlock said dryly.

John glared at him. “Don’t,” he snapped, ready to send Sherlock away if necessary. Startled, Sherlock backed down and fell silent, walking behind John, keeping his thoughts to himself. John took a deep breath and told himself that he was talking all of this too personally, but really, this situation deserved far more respect than Sherlock was probably capable of showing.

Reginald turned at the hallway by the dining room, then turned again, crossing the kitchen. As soon as it became apparent that Reginald was headed for the back door, John considered sending Sherlock to get Ethan and Sophie, but decided to see what the old man was doing before sending up alarms. John was perfectly capable of intervening if there was any threat to Reginald’s health, and he seemed entirely aware of his surroundings and in control of his own actions.

“Open the door, will you?” Reginald prompted, stopping near the back door.

John nodded, opening the door as he gave Sherlock a warning look. When Sherlock made no protest, John said, “Button up. It’s freezing outside.”

“And raining,” Sherlock said mildly, though his only concession to the weather was to turn up his collar and stick his hands in his coat pockets.

“Rain won’t kill you,” Reginald scoffed, pushing the control stick. The motor strained a bit to get the chair over the threshold, but soon enough he bumped his way out onto a stone patio overlooking the overgrown lawn.

“If I can ask, sir, where are we going?” John asked politely, zipping up his own jacket and falling in beside Reginald.

“I’ve lived here since fifty-six,” Reginald said, turning the wheelchair sharply to the right. “I can barely even remember living anywhere else. My Phillip and Marie were born here, and then my grandson — that was Charles — and his son, Ethan. They’ve all got their own places now, but not Harold. He’s always been here. He said he always would be, and I made sure of that.”

John shivered, glancing at Sherlock, whose expression had gone sharp and intent. “Harold Latham is here, sir?” John asked, unable to keep his voice calm and steady.

Instead of answering, Reginald drove his wheelchair along the back of the house in silence. Rain darkened the shoulders of his coat and beaded up on the fur collar. His hand shook on the controller, but he didn’t stop the wheelchair until he reached the top of a wooden ramp that had been built over part of a stone staircase. At the foot of the ramp, a small flagstone path led towards an overgrown hedge. John could just barely see a winged statue beyond the hedge.

“A private cemetery,” Sherlock said softly.

Remembering the figure in the hallway and the attic, John shook his head, breath catching in his throat. He was hallucinating ghosts; he was in no condition to go visiting the grave of one.

But Reginald didn’t hesitate. He started his wheelchair down the wet ramp, and the wheels skidded and slipped, struggling for traction. John couldn’t bring himself to move; after an instant, Sherlock rushed after the wheelchair, catching the handles to steady its descent onto the flagstone path.

John shook his head, closing his eyes against the rain, and told himself he was being foolish. He went after them, shivering from the cold weather, and followed them down the path. Sherlock looked back at him once, sharp eyes probably reading everything John was thinking, though he thankfully made no comment.

The path led into a narrow opening in the hedge, one low enough that Sherlock had to duck. Beyond was a small square of weeds and tall grass, broken by a dozen tall gravestones. Most were rounded at the top, the dates etched so long ago that the sharp edges of the letters had begun to soften. Off to one side, where the grass was lowest, a low column supported the statue of an angel, head bowed, hands covering her face, wings raised.

The inscription on the small column read:

> _Cpt. Harold Latham_  
>  b. 28 Mar 1917  
> d. 29 Oct 1956  
> The best friend a man  
> could ever have

“That’s today,” John said, his voice sounding distant in his own ears.

Reginald nodded, looking down at the earth below the statue. “I had to make certain he could stay here,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think he could, but the priest said it was all right. God would understand.”

“Understand?” Sherlock said sharply. “He killed himself.”

“Sherlock!” John caught his arm and pulled him a step back from Reginald’s wheelchair, but the old man nodded.

“In the trophy room,” Reginald said sadly. “But he said he’d always be here, and I made sure he could keep that promise.” He pushed the control to roll the wheelchair forward, so he could reach with one hand to touch the pillar. “It looks like this is the end, Harold. I have to go, and soon I’ll be with Ellie. Maybe you’ll be waiting for me with her, when it’s finally my time.”

John turned, pulling Sherlock away, unable to listen to Reginald’s soft voice. The secret of Harold’s letters weighed on him, and he knew that his resolve would break, sooner or later, and he’d say something. After today, Reginald would probably never return to Harold’s grave again. As much as John couldn’t bear the thought that he would never know Harold’s real feelings, that secret wasn’t his to share.

“Dad?” Sophie’s voice rang out distantly from the house. “Dad!”

John looked back; Reginald was still speaking quietly to the grave, showing no sign that he’d heard. John didn’t answer, thinking the old man deserved all the time he wanted, and to hell with the transport drivers’ schedule, but then Ethan called out, “There!” and John knew they’d been spotted.

He looked over to see Ethan jogging over with an umbrella, followed by one of the transport van attendants. Sophie was barely visible just outside the kitchen door. “Stall them,” he told Sherlock, and went back into the cemetery.

Reginald was still talking, his voice much softer now, breaking as he shivered. John unzipped his jacket and pulled it off, shaking rain away from his face as he draped the jacket over Reginald’s shoulders, holding the ends over his head to try and keep him from getting even more soaked than he already was. “Mr. Stewart? Sir?”

“I know,” Reginald said with a deep sigh. He patted the wet stone once more before he sat back, shivering as he tucked his hands into his coat.

“You know, Harold... He must have cared very much,” John said, trying to find the right words. “He gave you his home.”

“In the War, every time we almost died, we’d laugh and say we’d live forever, as long as we were together,” Reginald said. “But there was always something about Harold... something he couldn’t find. He went all over the world — India, Egypt, the Caribbean — and he never did seem to find it.”

“He —” John shook his head, looking back at Ethan and Sherlock, who seemed to be arguing, most likely over bringing Reginald out in the rain like this. “Maybe he kept leaving because he knew he had a family to come back to.”

Reginald sighed, nodding. “That, he did. He never married, you know. He always said we were all the family he ever needed. My boy, Phillip? Ellie and I named him after Harold’s father.”

“I’m certain he was honoured,” John said, heartbroken. It was obvious Reginald had no idea how Harold had felt. He looked over at Sherlock, wondering if this was their future, fifty years from now.

“Dad!” Ethan called. John looked over in time to see Ethan circle around Sherlock and run towards the cemetery.

“Sir?” he said quietly to Reginald. “Your great-grandson’s —”

“He did always come back, you know,” Reginald mused. “Oh, he’d be gone six, seven months —”

“Dad! Christ, what the _hell_ were you thinking?” Ethan demanded, glaring angrily at John. “It’s bloody freezing out here!”

Much as John knew, as a doctor, he should agree, he shook his head and stood his ground. “He has a right to visit his best friend’s grave.”

“He’s in no condition to make that sort of decision,” Ethan snapped. Holding the umbrella out over the wheelchair, he went around in front of Reginald and asked, “Dad? Are you all right?”

Reginald smiled hazily. “Fine, Phillip. Good lad. You remember your Uncle Harold, don’t you?”

Ethan shot a fierce glare at John as he rose. “If he gets sick, I swear...” He clenched his fists and nodded to the orderly, who took John’s place at the back of the wheelchair.

Reluctantly, John pulled his jacket back on and stepped out of the way. The orderly was speaking to Reginald in a falsely cheerful voice, saying, “We’ll just be going for a nice drive now, Mr. Stewart.”

Ethan stopped John from following. “Look, I won’t forget how you helped me and Sophie, but you have no right to put his health at risk like this. If your business is done now, I think you should go — both of you.”

John took a steadying breath. “Fine,” he said calmly, catching Sherlock’s eye. When Sherlock tipped his head questioningly, John nodded and started walking. Sherlock took his mobile from his pocket, turned on his heel, and walked onto the grass, apparently deciding the fastest way out was to cut across the lawn surrounding the house.

Ethan handed the umbrella to the orderly, to keep Reginald dry. Then he ran ahead, taking the stairs beside the ramp two at a time, perhaps rushing to get back to Sophie.

John followed Reginald and the orderly at a distance, wishing he could have handled this all differently, though he had no idea what he should have done. Telling Reginald would only upset the man. If not for the dumb luck of finding the unsent letters, the secret that had been buried for more than fifty years would remain that way. Besides, Reginald had married and had children, and he was from an older time, when people weren’t quite so open-minded. What if he couldn’t accept Harold’s feelings? John had no desire to taint the man’s memory of his best friend.

John looked back at the grave, pausing for a moment. The statue had gone dark with rain streaming over the sculpted edges, rivulets dripping from between the carved feathers of the arching wings. There must have been a small light installed on the grass, perhaps one that was photosensitive, programmed only to illuminate when it was dark. It was on now, casting a faint glow beneath the statue, giving it an eerie cast.

Then John went cold as the subtle light seemed to shift, and he saw it again, the impossible shape of a man in an old military uniform. Now, in the murky daylight broken by rain, John recognised the darkness covering his left arm and shoulder as a dark spill of blood from his neck.

Slowly, Harold Latham raised his right arm, elbow bent slightly, taking steady aim at the orderly pushing Reginald Stewart’s wheelchair. In his hand, impossibly, he held a gun — John recognised the top-heavy design as a Webley revolver, issued to the British military as late as the sixties. The falling rain passed through Harold, but the gun... the gun seemed all too real, and Harold’s finger was on the trigger. The angle was high, a head shot, carefully aimed to keep Reginald himself out of harm’s way.

John moved without thinking, shouting a warning as he rushed at the orderly, feet fighting for any traction on the rain-wet grass. Reginald and the orderly turned to look over at John, who tackled the orderly as the world shattered, the gunshot ringing in his ears.

They went down together, and John must have landed strangely in the wet grass. He tried to cushion his fall with his left hand, but his arm simply collapsed under his own weight. Heat blossomed through his chest and limbs as everything went distant and grey. He gasped in a breath that sounded far too loud and wet, drowning out the sound of the rain and distorted voices shouting words he couldn’t understand.

Weight pressed down on his chest, forcing the air out of his lungs, and he tasted blood as he exhaled. He couldn’t lift his left arm, and his attempt to roll onto his back was more like a concentrated fall. When his head rolled on the wet grass, the world seemed to recede another notch.

With clinical detachment, a corner of his mind began to catalogue his condition, taking note of his difficulty breathing, the blood filling his mouth and throat, the heat bathing the left side of his neck. His heart hammered against his chest, far too rapid, and the liquid warmth pulsing over his throat was timed to that rapid beat.

Then Sherlock was there, pale skin turned ashen, rain pulling his hair down into his eyes. He fell at John’s side, stripping off his scarf, and he was shouting something, but no sound reached through the fog separating John’s mind from his body. Sherlock pressed the scarf against John’s neck, turning his head slightly away. John wanted to turn back, but he couldn’t find the strength, so he looked at Sherlock from the corner of his eyes. His right hand worked, and he raised it to clutch at Sherlock’s sleeve, but his grip was weak, his hand trembling.

Sherlock’s hand covered John’s forehead, shielding his eyes from the rain. He shifted to meet John’s gaze, and there was blood spotting his pale skin, dripping in the rain, staining his shirt and the sleeves of his coat. John tried to move, to lift his right hand again, but everything was going cold. There was too much blood in his mouth for him to breathe, much less to speak, and a small part of him saw the bitter humour in him dying now, with so much unsaid. At least Sherlock was here with him, though. That would have to be enough.


	10. Chapter 10

**Monday, 24 September 1956**

“Your beard looks like birds could nest in it,” Reggie said, trying to inject humour into his tone, though it rang false.

Harold smiled faintly, remaining seated by the fireplace in the trophy room. He seemed a hundred times better, though his eyes were still sunken, his face gaunt. “You sent me a doctor, not a barber, Reggie.”

“And thank God I did,” Reggie said, heartfelt. He went to the sideboard and poured two healthy measures of scotch, hoping to get some colour back into Harold’s face.

“Not God. Thank _you,_ ” Harold corrected quietly.

Reggie handed Harold one glass, keeping the other for himself. Rather than sitting, he leaned against the mantle beside Harold’s chair, needing to be close, to reassure himself that Harold would be all right. “You’ve certainly figured out an effective way of getting out of a scolding.”

Harold’s brows twitched up as he sipped his scotch. “A scolding? And here I thought we’d finished that business after the army, Major.”

Reggie snorted, his stern demeanour fading. “Harold... Look, Harold, Phillip found one of your... one of those masks you brought back from somewhere. He scared poor Marie half to death.”

“That boy’s trouble. You’re raising him right,” Harold approved, looking evasively away. He took another drink and scratched at his ragged beard.

With a sigh, Reggie set his glass on the mantle and crouched down in front of Harold, putting a hand on his arm. “Look, Harold,” he said gently, trying to meet Harold’s eyes. “I’m not your father, and this is still your house, but you’re my best friend, and I care about you.”

Harold’s gaze met his for only a second before he closed his eyes. Under his beard, his jaw tightened, and his free hand clenched into a fist. He gulped down the rest of his scotch and set the glass aside, exhaling long and hard before he said, “Reggie —”

“Please,” Reggie interrupted softly. “Come back to me, Harold. All this... all this _nonsense_ of yours... it’s scaring me. I want my best friend back.”

Harold’s brow furrowed deeply. He swallowed, arm trembling under Reggie’s hand. He forced a shaky smile, and when his eyes opened, they were glassy. He covered Reggie’s hand with his own. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Probably not, but you’re stuck with me all the same,” Reggie teased gently. “Please, whatever this fascination of yours is, you’ve got to stop. It’s scared the children, but it’s hurting you, and I can’t watch you do this to yourself.”

Harold took a deep breath and nodded, patting Reggie’s hand. “All right,” he said quietly.

“All right?”

With another weak smile, Harold promised, “No more. I’ll get rid of everything.”

Reggie sighed, relieved, and nodded. “Thank you, Harold. Thank you.”

“In fact, if you’ll help me pack it all away, I’ll bring it with me when I go to London later this week.”

Surprised, Reggie looked up at Harold, whose expression had gone distant and thoughtful. “London?”

“There are some antiquities dealers who’d be very interested — it’s all authentic, you know,” he said with a chuckle. “And I need to see my solicitor.”

“Your solicitor?” Reggie asked as he rose.

Harold gave his hand one quick squeeze before he let go. “Just some paperwork to sort out. Nothing to worry about, I promise.”

Reggie smiled and picked up Harold’s empty glass. He turned to refill it, saying, “I trust you.”

Quietly, Harold said, “And I, you, Reggie. With my life.”

 

~~~

 

**Tuesday, 30 October 2012**

“Is he family?”

“He shouldn’t be in there.”

“The police want to talk to him.”

Sherlock was aware of all the meaningless, self-important voices outside the door, but he disregarded them all, just as he disregarded Mycroft’s smooth, calming tones as he assured the hospital staff, the authorities, and the press that Sherlock’s presence in the hospital room was not up for discussion.

All that mattered was the soft hiss of oxygen and the hum of monitoring machines and the sound of John’s breathing. Sherlock sat beside the bed, resting one arm on the thin mattress, his knee pressed painfully against the railing he’d lowered so he could gently hold John’s good right hand between both of his.

His world had narrowed to this small, hateful white room and the unconscious man in the bed. His mind had gone still, all of his thoughts focused entirely on the pulse under his fingertips, strong and slow. If he closed his eyes for more than a few moments, he remembered that pulse hammering, racing to spill John’s life over the wet grass, saturating the inadequate makeshift bandage of Sherlock’s scarf, so he kept his eyes open, memorizing John’s face. In sleep, he looked young, free of stress. His lips were dry, the line of his face subtly changed by the nasal cannula that supplied him with cool oxygen.

The door opened. Sherlock looked over long enough to register that the intruder was Mycroft, not a doctor who would try to send him away. He’d already nearly been arrested for assault once in this hospital.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft said gravely. “You need rest. You’re doing him a disservice by mistreating yourself like this.”

“Get me coffee,” Sherlock said, turning back to watch John. Had his breathing changed, or was it an autonomic response to Mycroft’s presence? “I’m not leaving him.”

“John would never allow you to stay in this condition,” Mycroft tried. “A few hours —”

Sherlock glared at him for three seconds — three seconds of not watching John, which was all he could take. He turned back, trying to push thoughts of Mycroft out of his mind.

He’d come too close to losing John. The doctors had used words like ‘impossible’ and ‘million to one odds’, but all Sherlock cared about was that it was _too close_. He had no idea who’d shot John, and right now, he couldn’t be arsed to care. There would be time for revenge later, when John was healthy and at his side. For now, he needed to know that John was alive far more than he needed the shooter to be dead. Painfully dead.

“I’ve spoken with the directors of the assisted living facility,” Mycroft continued. “I’ve convinced them to look at this as an opportunity to appreciate the heroism of their drivers, rather than filing a lawsuit against you for your threats.”

“I wasn’t going to wait for an ambulance,” Sherlock snapped at Mycroft. Then he looked back at John and spoke more gently, conscious of his need for rest. “There wasn’t time to waste.”

“I’m certain you saved his life.” Mycroft walked to the other side of the bed. “But you do need to rest, Sherlock. There’s nothing more you can do here.”

“Coffee,” Sherlock told him, resolutely staying right where he was.

 

~~~

 

Twice that morning, John stirred but didn’t rouse or open his eyes. Sherlock left only when he had no choice, only for a few minutes at time, and Mycroft sent in a steady stream of assistants and orderlies with coffee and pastries to tempt Sherlock into eating.

So when John finally did open his eyes, Sherlock was right there, watching him. “Don’t talk,” he said at once, sitting forward, heart leaping as John’s gaze met his. He was wide-eyed and disoriented. He licked his lips and twitched the hand that Sherlock was holding, but didn’t try to pull away. When he swallowed, his whole body went tense.

Sherlock rose from the low, uncomfortable visitor’s chair. He kept hold of John’s right hand and said, “Don’t move. You’re in hospital. You were shot.”

John closed his eyes, frowning. His lips clearly shaped words that came out as a croaking, rasping sound.

Sherlock’s laugh held a desperate edge. “Swearing qualifies as talking,” he said, freeing one hand to touch John’s face. The frown lines seemed to smooth under his touch, and John took a gentler, deep breath. With his thumb, Sherlock traced the line of John’s eyebrow, the thin skin of his temple, and brushed his fingers into John’s hair.

When John’s eyes opened again, Sherlock offered, “Do you want me to get your doctor? He’s not entirely incompetent. Mycroft brought someone down from the London Trauma Centre.”

John’s dry lips curved up in a smile. He shook his head and held Sherlock’s hand tightly for a moment, silently saying, _You_.

The relief Sherlock felt was entirely out of proportion to that one brief word. He sat back down, pulled the chair up against the bed, and leaned in close. He knew there were things he should say, but that had never been his place in their relationship. Those were John’s words, not his, even if they were his feelings and not John’s. For twenty-eight hours, he’d been trying to think of what to say, but he’d come up blank.

John’s hand tightened around Sherlock’s, and he realized his eyes had fallen closed. “What? Do you need something?” he asked, thinking of the army of toadies Mycroft had brought with him to Sussex.

_You,_ John said, his dark blue eyes stern. _Sleep_.

Sherlock thought about lying, but only for a moment. John needed his strength to recover, not to argue. So instead, he said, “I’m not leaving.”

John gave him a disappointed look, though he didn’t let go of Sherlock’s hand.

Grateful, Sherlock leaned down, gently touching his forehead to John’s, listening to the sound of his breathing and feeling the warmth of his skin. John freed his hand from Sherlock’s grasp and rested it at the back of his neck, holding him lightly in place.

Sherlock closed his eyes, relaxing under that touch. John understood. He wouldn’t try and make Sherlock leave.

Careful not to hurt John, Sherlock sat back down and leaned against the side of the bed, resting his head against his forearm. John moved his hand away from Sherlock’s neck, sliding his fingers into Sherlock’s tangled hair. Sherlock looked up at him without moving.

_Sleep,_ John said silently, petting him.

Sherlock wanted to tell him not to let anyone disturb them, but the relief that John was all right had sapped the last of the energy that had kept him on his feet. He closed his eyes, shifted so his head leaned against John’s hip, and allowed himself to sleep.

 

~~~

 

The soft click of the door opening brought John out of his comfortable doze. His pain was a distant, hazy thing, floating off somewhere beyond the drugs that kept it at bay, and Sherlock was not just there with him but curled up against the side of the bed like a particularly cuddly Great Dane, head resting on John’s thigh, long arms splayed around him across his hips and under the small of his back. John’s right hand rested in Sherlock’s hair, and every time he tried to move it away, Sherlock muttered in sleepy protest.

John grinned when he recognised Molly. Instinctively, he tried to say, “Hello,” but it came out as a harsh rasp over the shards of glass that had replaced his vocal cords.

“Oh, don’t talk,” she said worriedly as she got two steps into the room. Then she froze, her pretty eyes going wide as she spotted Sherlock.

_Right, I was shot again,_ John thought as the memory slipped through the narcotic haze. He felt the warm rush of his heart speeding up at the impossible consideration that he’d been shot by a ghost.

Desperate for something normal — something real and grounding and very much not a murderous, lovesick ghost — John beckoned Molly over to the side of the bed and tried to lift his left hand, but it wasn’t responding. His heart gave another thump of alarm. He looked down at his hand, telling himself to move his fingers, but nothing happened.

“Don’t worry about that,” Molly said at once, touching the back of his left hand. He felt the warm press of her fingers and gave a shaky, relieved exhale. “Did anyone tell you what happened?”

_No,_ he silently said, giving her his best pleading, lost-puppy-dog look. She was a doctor, even if all of her patients were usually already dead; she’d understand the need for real, accurate information and not the glossed-over crap usually fed to patients.

Her smile became sly, and she lowered her voice, gently taking his left hand between both of hers. After casting one more surprised glance at the sleeping Sherlock, she whispered, “Well, I’m not supposed to know, but I’ve got a friend who let me take a peek at your files. They’re calling it a miracle. Less than a millimetre from the left carotid artery. The bullet cauterised enough of the wound that you didn’t bleed out, but it was a near thing.”

John’s breath stuttered as he realised just how close he’d come to dying — and this time was closer than last time. He could visualise the path the bullet must have taken. Christ! If he’d been out in the field, he _would have died_.

“I wasn’t going to tell him yet,” Sherlock muttered into the thin hospital blanket.

John frowned down at him, wondering how long he’d been awake and aware of John petting him. He shifted his hand away from Sherlock’s hair and gave him a hard poke in the shoulder instead. He vaguely remembered Sherlock attempting emergency treatment, applying pressure to the bleeding wounds with his scarf. It was very possible that Sherlock was the only reason John was alive.

“Of course he’d want to know,” Molly said in John’s defence.

“Now he’ll worry,” Sherlock complained, lifting his head to glare at her. “Worrying interferes with recovery.”

John gave him another poke and turned to Molly, hoping she’d explain.

“Understanding is important. He’ll recognise the treatment —”

“Your patients are all already dead,” Sherlock snapped.

This time, John smacked his shoulder, and Sherlock gave him a betrayed look that hadn’t fooled John for years. He tried to speak, but the twinge of pain in his throat silenced him. Instead, he motioned to Sherlock and put a hand up to his ear in the universally-understood gesture for ‘give me a phone right this instant’.

Smirking, Sherlock sat back from the bed, spine snapping and cracking loudly. He patted his pockets and found his mobile in the outside pocket of his jacket, where he never kept it, making John wonder if he’d had someone else going through his clothes while John had been unconscious. The thought roused a jealous side to John that he hadn’t ever recognised in himself.

One-handed, he snatched the mobile out of Sherlock’s grasp and set it on the bed. He’d become fairly fast at texting over the last few years, but it was still awkward to do with the mobile balanced on his leg, plastic case slipping on the blanket as he typed with his off-hand.

_left arm how long til full use rtrn_

He showed the text to Molly, pulling the phone out of reach when Sherlock grabbed for it.

“It shouldn’t be too long,” she answered as Sherlock finally got the phone and read the text. “You’ll make a complete recovery.” Then she leaned in and added, “I understand they’re flying in a neurological specialist from Barrow in Phoenix.”

Panic spiked through John. He needed a specialist? The effects of the trauma were obvious, controllable. He’d _treated_ GSW to the neck, and he wasn’t a specialist by any means.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock said, dropping the mobile to take hold of John’s right hand. His fingers went to John’s pulse, but he held on even after the few seconds it probably took for him to get a read of John’s condition. “He’s called in favors from half the planet, I think.”

“Just to be certain, I’m sure,” Molly added soothingly. “Nothing to worry about.”

If Mycroft was involved, there was everything to be worried about — most of all, the inevitable interrogation into who the hell shot him. He closed his eyes, pushing through the narcotics to reconstruct everything he remembered and try to find some logical explanation. Being Sherlock’s brother meant that Mycroft automatically expected to deal with unusual circumstances, but never anything... paranormal.

Finally, he decided his best bet was to fake amnesia. He _didn’t_ have a clear memory of anything after the shot. All he had to do was delete a few seconds before then. For years, he’d been hiding his feelings from Sherlock and his more astute older brother. Hiding an extra five minutes of memory shouldn’t be that difficult.

So he took the phone back, quickly typed, and showed the text to Molly and then Sherlock:

_molly thx sh get shooter_

Molly smiled and said, “You’re welcome.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “Not yet,” he said, his tone dangerously low. He reached out and deliberately took hold of John’s right hand, making him drop the phone again. “I need you healthy first. That’s what matters.”

John knew it was practicality rather than sentiment that motivated Sherlock — though perhaps not entirely. He was still holding John’s hand, no longer even pretending to have the excuse of taking his pulse, and John had a hazy memory of thinking Sherlock had almost kissed him.

Morphine, he finally decided, closing his eyes. He knew Molly had taken time out of a very busy schedule, between work and the baby and having a husband who was out of town half the time, but his body was screaming for him to rest.

Sherlock’s fingers rubbed a small, soothing circle against the back of John’s right hand. He was talking to Molly now, without that sharp, sarcastic edge, and his familiar baritone was enough to ease the last of his worries. Sherlock would keep him safe from ghosts and Mycroft and God help the doctor who thought to throw Sherlock out. John’s last memory was smiling wryly at the thought of Sherlock getting himself arrested for assaulting a doctor.

 

~~~

 

John allowed Sherlock to stay. John _wanted_ Sherlock to stay.

Even though Sherlock knew he should be paying attention to the specialists and nurses who crowded around John’s bed, his mind had stalled on the message John had typed:

_i want sherlock 2 stay_

Appalling grammar aside, Sherlock kept the unsent text message to brandish at any hospital official who so much as looked his way. When the doctors were there, Sherlock tried not to read too much meaning into the words. He told himself that John probably wanted someone present who could actually speak, someone uninhibited enough to send everyone away if they became too overbearing or annoying.

But when they were all gone, when they were finally left to themselves, inevitably John reached out to Sherlock with his right hand. Every time, Sherlock gave him the mobile, which he dropped onto the blankets so he could take hold of Sherlock’s hand and not let go, even when he fell into a doze.

Towards evening, John let go long enough to pick up the mobile and type out a request for tea. Sherlock read the mobile, took John’s hand again, and shouted, “Mycroft!”

John rolled his eyes at Sherlock, though he couldn’t hide his amused grin.

After a single knock, one of Mycroft’s minions came into the room. Early thirties, former SAS, gun in a shoulder holster, right-hand draw. Mycroft was taking the shooter threat seriously.

“Get tea,” Sherlock ordered. When John squeezed his fingers tightly, he added, “Please.”

The agent hesitated for a moment, glancing from Sherlock to John and back, before he nodded. “I’ll send one of the nurses to get some,” he offered, leaving before Sherlock could tell him to hurry.

As soon as the door closed, Sherlock turned back to John, studying his face. He looked better now, though he’d been shot _(through the neck... high chance of fatality... so much blood)_ just thirty-six hours before. His colouring had improved, and his eyes no longer looked sunken and dark. Only the massive bandage taped over his throat to protect the site of his surgery from infection showed that anything was wrong with him at all.

“You can’t leave me,” Sherlock said, moving to the edge of his chair. John’s brows twitched together in the start of a frown. “I had to live without you once. I won’t do it again.”

John’s eyes closed for a moment. Sherlock had no idea if it was in exasperation or sympathy. He hadn’t even intended to speak, but he realised that speaking now was brilliant. John had no choice but to listen to him now, without interrupting. With his right hand trapped in Sherlock’s and his left still temporarily paralysed, he’d have no chance to send Sherlock away until he’d heard everything Sherlock had to say.

“I know you’re not gay. I know we’re not a couple — even though you haven’t told anyone that. Not for years, actually.” John’s hand went tight around Sherlock’s, giving Sherlock a perfect excuse to look down at their joined hands. “What we have — this, between us — it’s something we both want. Something we both need.” He took a deep breath and glanced at the door, suddenly hoping Mycroft’s minion took his time finding a nurse to fetch tea.

Then he looked back down, ignoring the insistent way that john’s fingers tapped at his hand, trying to get his attention. “You don’t date anymore, but I don’t think it’s because you don’t want to. There’s no reason that _we_ couldn’t. We very nearly already do. And with you, I wouldn’t —” He shook his head. “I would want to _try_. We already have a... a _better_ relationship than anyone else out there.”

John was trying to pull free now, and he finally bent his thumb and forefinger enough to pinch hard at the sensitive webbing between Sherlock’s fingers. The instant Sherlock’s hand relaxed, John yanked his hand back and scrabbled for the phone, exhaling little huffs of frustration.

“John — we should at least try,” Sherlock said, trying to get hold of the mobile without hurting John or tangling up in his IV or monitoring lines. “It _makes sense_. I care about you. I’d kill everyone in London to keep you safe. I’d —”

John smacked the back of his hand against Sherlock’s arm, nearly dropping the mobile. Sherlock shut up and tried to grab the phone, only to have John glare and silently, fiercely mouth _Sherlock!_ Then he started to type, just a few brief stabs at the buttons, before he turned the mobile to face Sherlock.

_yes you idiot_

Sherlock stared at the screen, processing what he read for all of five seconds before he demanded, “‘Yes, you idiot’? That’s it? _Yes?_ I’m trying to tell you that I love you, and all you can do is say ‘yes’ and call me — _me!_ — an idiot?”

A rough, coughing sound made Sherlock look from the screen to John, who was silently laughing, blue eyes bright. He dropped the phone and reached for Sherlock not for his hand but for his hair. Strong fingers twisted and tugged hard. Caught by surprise, Sherlock came up off the chair, bracing against the side of the bed as John pulled him close.

Their first kiss was brief, John’s chapped lips rough against Sherlock’s. The hiss of the nasal cannula was lost under the Sherlock’s pulse, loud in his ears. The instant their lips touched, John’s hand relaxed, sliding to cup the back of Sherlock’s skull, holding him gently close.

When John pressed back into the pillows, allowing an inch of air between their lips, Sherlock opened his eyes, though he couldn’t recall closing them. John’s expression had gone wary and uncertain, flicking over Sherlock’s face as though trying to read his thoughts.

Then, as if comforted by whatever he saw, John smiled, and silently said, _Love you, too._


	11. Chapter 11

**Thursday, 8 November 1956**

Reginald stared down at the hole dug deep into the cold, wet earth. The dark mahogany coffin had been lowered into place ten minutes before. It was already filthy, and he had the mad urge to jump down and clean it off.

Ellie curled her fingers around his hand, squeezing briefly. “Reggie, love,” she said quietly. “Come inside.”

The breath he pulled into his lungs tasted like ice and mud and loneliness. He let go of her hand to put his arm around her shoulders and hold her close, but the hole inside him was still there. Memories of laughter and sullen complaints and steadfast loyalty were no comfort at all.

“I thought he’d always be here with me,” Reginald said softly. His words were choked, his throat hot and painfully tight. The gentle drizzle soaking his hair hid his tears from everyone but himself.

Ellie quieted, leaning close, the brim of her sombre black hat pressing into Reginald’s olive green overcoat. It still fit, as did the uniform beneath, an almost perfect match for the uniform in which Harold had been buried. Major Stewart and Captain Latham, survivors together.

“Reggie,” Ellie finally said as she started to shiver in the cold. He looked down at the curve of her hat that obscured her face. “People have been... talking. They say it was suicide, not an accident.”

Anger spiked through him, stiffening his spine and lending strength to his voice. “Absolutely not,” he lied. “He was cleaning his gun, and it went off. No one suicides by a gunshot to the neck, Eleanor.”

She nodded, caving before his unhesitating defence of his best friend. “Of course, love. I’ll just... see to the guests. Please, come inside soon?”

Reginald nodded, closing his eyes. “Just a few more minutes.”

Quietly, she stepped away, pressing her hand to his sleeve before she turned. He heard her footsteps on the flagstones they’d laid from the tiny cemetery gate to Harold’s grave.

“Ellie.”

“Yes, Reggie?”

“Would you fetch the brandy from the trophy room? It was —” His breath hitched as he thought of the nightly ritual he and Harold shared, those few private moments after the day’s chaos had ended, when Reginald could set aside his life as husband and father and businessman and simply be himself: Harold’s best friend. “It was our favourite,” he whispered, looking down at the coffin.

“Of course, love,” Ellie said softly.

At the gentle tone of her voice, he turned and watched her walk up the path, still shapely and beautiful after ten years and two children, and he smiled wistfully. He had to look forward, not back — to mourn and then put his grief aside. He had a loving family and dear friends.

Sadly, he looked back down at the coffin. Poor Harold, who had died alone, never knowing what it was like to be in love.

 

~~~

 

**Thursday, 8 November 2012**

“I’m fine, Sherlock,” John said hoarsely as he clenched his left fist, the motion strong and smooth. “I swear.”

In response, Sherlock gave John a sullen, flat glare that anyone else would interpret as anger. Secretly, John felt privileged to know the truth — that Sherlock’s brusque demeanour hid a surprising depth of caring, even if that side was primarily reserved solely for John. The show of irritation was a habit, Sherlock’s way of hiding his heart  from the world.

“It’s too soon for you to be back to work,” Sherlock finally said as the taxi slowed, turning up the drive to Latham Hall.

“I’m not spending one more minute watching you stomp through the flat because this case is unfinished,” John said bluntly. Honestly, he had no idea what was going to happen with this case, because no force on earth would compel him to tell Sherlock he’d solved it, and oh by the way, the murderer was _already dead_. But Sherlock was clever — he’d come up with something, John would blog about it, and they could both put this behind them.

Until then, Sherlock was proving his usual impossible self, only this time, he had the added pressure of wanting to play his new overprotective, smothering boyfriend role to the hilt. Honestly, as nice as it was to have Sherlock actually being considerate for a change, offering soup and blankets and endless cups of tea, John was going to shoot the man himself if things didn’t get back to normal.

“You should have stayed in London.”

“You’re repeating yourself. Boring,” John mocked affectionately, reaching across the seat to take Sherlock’s hand.

Sherlock huffed and glanced at John, eyes flicking down to the week-old wounds on his neck. “The Stewarts said they’d already moved out,” he said quietly. “We’ll have to get tea when we’re back in town.”

John laughed.

A small car was parked outside the front doors to the Hall. Ethan Stewart was trying to fit a cardboard box into the already-packed boot. He looked up and waved to them as the taxi stopped, his body language screaming his apprehension. Doubtless after all the incidents at the Hall, he was paranoid of lawsuits.

John got out, leaving Sherlock to pay the fare, and went right to Ethan. “Afternoon,” he said with a reassuring smile.

“Doctor.” Ethan dropped the box and stuck out his hand, offering a weak, anxious handshake. “How are you — How are you feeling?” he asked, checking John’s neck before looking him over for other signs of injury in a visual search pattern that had become all too familiar.

“I’m fine. Full recovery. It’s nothing more than a sore throat now,” John promised, trying to speak in a normal tone of voice. Then, because Ethan was still tense, he added, “Really. I never was much of a singer, I promise.”

“You’re a _terrible_ singer,” Sherlock agreed, long strides taking him right to John’s side. He claimed John’s hand in an unconscious, possessive manner that had become his new habit. It was warmly affectionate, occasionally inconvenient, and had almost entirely replaced nicotine patches, so John wasn’t about to argue. “After that one Christmas, you swore —”

“Yes, thank you, Sherlock,” John interrupted.

“Well. Um,” Ethan said, trying too hard not to look down at their joined hands. “If you want to go look around, it’s —”

“We’ll do that,” Sherlock interrupted with a quick nod before he started right for the house, without letting go of John.

“Thanks,” John told Ethan, reflexively polite, and followed Sherlock inside.

Once in the foyer, Sherlock stopped and looked up, his eyes going to the hole in the high ceiling. It still hadn’t been repaired, and the sight of it made John’s stomach flip. Then Sherlock lowered his head a bit and said, “The shooting has to be an anomaly.”

In a way, John knew that was true. Harold had never intended for him to be the victim, but it wasn’t as if he could say that. So he took refuge in stupidity and asked, “Oh?”

“Obviously.” Sherlock turned and pulled John towards the stairs, glancing up at the portrait that still hung there. “Two elaborate deaths here, followed by a shooting in the back garden? It could even be entirely unrelated.”

“It’s not as if we haven’t had shooters after us before,” John said agreeably as they turned at the landing, heading up the right staircase towards the trophy room. He braced for crawling, shivering apprehension that didn’t come, even when Sherlock stopped outside the trophy room door.

He let go of John’s hand, turned the doorknob, and pushed the door open into darkness. Cool, dusty air stirred as Sherlock crossed the threshold, reaching into his coat for his torch.

“Look for anything —” Sherlock stopped in his tracks, reaching protectively for John.

In the middle of the room, a shimmer of light appeared, surreal green and all too familiar. John pushed Sherlock aside and put himself between Sherlock and the ghost of Harold Latham. “Don’t,” John warned a bit madly, the instinct to protect Sherlock overruling even the rational thought that he was addressing a ghost — _threatening_ a ghost, in fact.

The ghost coalesced, sharpening into the clearly defined form of the man in the portrait on the staircase, right down to the medals on his dress uniform. He looked soberly at John before lifting his chin to regard Sherlock.

“John,” Sherlock whispered. His hand slipped over John’s right shoulder, squeezing tightly.

“That’s...” John began, before his voice faltered. Panic twisted through him as he realised that there was no way to stop this. Two worlds crossed paths — two impossible, incompatible worlds — and he had no idea how to help Sherlock rationalise the presence of a ghost.

“Captain Harold Latham,” Sherlock finished.

Harold took a step forward. John’s left hand twitched instinctively towards the gun holstered at the small of his back, which Sherlock had insisted he carry. Sherlock stepped back, trying to pull John with him.

Immediately, Harold stilled, looking back at John. His shadowed expression held a deep sense of sadness that John could understand all too well. Heartbroken, John lowered his hand, realising Harold presented no threat.

“I’m sorry,” John said quietly.

Harold’s head dipped in acknowledgement. Instead of advancing, he stepped to his left, reaching for the antique sideboard. Always curious, Sherlock moved closer without letting go of John, watching intently as Harold turned back to face them.

The ghost straightened, drawing his shoulders back, and a sad, faint smile crossed his face. And then he was simply gone, leaving John and Sherlock in darkness.

Sherlock let out a harsh breath. He let go of John, fumbling in the darkness with a familiar rustle of thick wool. A moment later, the blacklight torch snapped on, blue-white light searing through the darkness. John blinked, trying to adjust to the sudden glare.

_“John!”_

He opened his stinging eyes and blinked, disoriented by the glare. “What —” he began, before he caught sight of nacreous green spots on the dusty carpet.

The light danced as Sherlock’s hand shook. “That’s — You saw —”

Worried, John turned to face Sherlock. “I know this all seems a bit much,” he said, though he faltered. He had no idea how to help Sherlock’s logical, scientific mind come to grips with this.

Sherlock’s face was unusually pale in the blue-white light of his torch. He was breathing rapidly, pupils dilated, eyes darting around as he searched the room. Then his jaw set and he nodded once, silently.

John followed Sherlock’s gaze to the sideboard, where an all-too-familiar gun rested, impossibly clean and gleaming with oil beneath the green light of Harold’s ghostly fingerprints. All around it, the sideboard was thick with the dust of decades.

“Webley mark six revolver,” Sherlock said, his voice devoid of emotion. “Thirty-eight calibre.” He twisted to look at John and lifted his free hand to touch the stitches at the front of his throat. “It —”

John nodded, swallowing against the fear that this could all prove too much for Sherlock to handle. “Harold Latham was the shooter,” he said quietly. “He was aiming for the orderly who was taking Reginald away from Latham Hall. Away from him.”

Sherlock took a deep breath and looked back at the gun. “The footprints,” he said in that same chillingly distant voice.

“Sherlock...” John carefully moved between Sherlock and the gun, flinching when the blacklight almost blinded him again. He pushed the torch down, and then reached up to cup Sherlock’s face gently between his hands. “I know how this seems, but you need —”

Sherlock frowned as though offended. “It _fits,_ ” he said accusingly, sharp anger suddenly colouring his voice. “The estate agents — the orderly. _That_ was the missing piece. Who else would have motive?”

Suddenly Sherlock was gone, pacing away, sending torchlight sweeping wildly across the ceiling as he shoved both hands into his hair. “I should have seen it!”

“You should have — Sherlock!” John protested, baffled. Was this a breakdown or a breakthrough? “How the _hell_ could you be expected to identify a _ghost_ as the killer?”

“It _fits,_ ” Sherlock repeated furiously. “What else could it have been? An opportunistic serial killer targeting estate agents?”

“But — Then — Have you ever... Have you ever even seen a ghost before?”

“Of course not.” Sherlock shook his head, turning back to face John. “You were never a target.”

“No. It was an accident.”

Sherlock took a deep breath. “The orderly. He was... he was taking Reginald away from Harold.”

John couldn’t hide his flinch of sympathy for poor Harold. “Yes.”

For some reason, Sherlock’s next nod was easier, less tense. “I want to see the library again.”

“Give me the torch.”

Surprised, Sherlock looked back. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Don’t be long.”

“I won’t,” John promised, catching the torch when Sherlock threw it to him.

As Sherlock left, John let out a shaky breath and leaned against the sideboard. The solidly-built antique held his weight without protest.

He had no idea if Harold’s surprise appearance was a good thing or bad. Sherlock _seemed_ to have accepted it — after all, the ghost was the murderer, and Sherlock put his cases before everything else. Perhaps he _could_ accept this bizarre circumstance as truth. He was brilliant, a genius far beyond anything John could possibly understand. If the facts fit... well, maybe that was all the proof that Sherlock needed.

With his left hand, John picked up the Webley. The ghostly-green traces were already fading. The revolver felt strange in his hand, too top-heavy to be comfortable. He wouldn’t carry it, but he would take it. He had the sense that Harold wanted him to have it, either as a peace offering or simply so that someone would remember him — the man who had died because of loneliness and unrequited love.

The man who was the only reason John had a chance at true happiness.

John tucked the revolver into his pocket and looked around at the dark, lonely trophy room. “Thank you,” he said softly, wondering if the ghost of Harold Latham could hear him.

 

~~~

 

“It’s lovely, actually. If you came to Sussex to see it, you’d immediately realise its potential,” Sherlock said, his baritone steady, calm, and strong. John let out a relieved sigh, recognising this as Sherlock’s on-the-phone voice, not his ranting-to-himself voice.

“No, before Christmas,” Sherlock continued after a moment. “It must be soon. They need to sell... Isn’t Mr. Scott an estate agent? Excellent. Bring him, then. He can expedite the paperwork.”

Curious, John frowned, wondering what Sherlock was talking about.

Sherlock’s sigh was audible but without the usual edge of impatience and scorn it would carry. “Please,” he said with quiet sincerity. “It’ll be ten years just to make it properly habitable, and John and I can’t keep... Oh! You could meet him. I want you to meet him. Yes, he’s here now, out in the hallway.”

John rolled his eyes and stepped into the doorway, looking across the library to where Sherlock stood in front of the windows, mobile pressed to his ear. Sherlock grinned at him, eyes bright, features composed, seemingly entirely sane — for him, at least.

“Please, Mother,” Sherlock said.

John blinked.

Sherlock’s smile softened. “Thank you. Let me know when your train arrives,” he said before he pocketed his mobile.

“What... That was your mother,” John said stupidly. He couldn’t remember Sherlock _ever_ phoning his mother, though he had occasionally disappeared for two days to visit her.

Sherlock crossed the room and gently slipped his fingers under John’s face, tipping it up for a kiss. “She’s coming here. I want her to see the house.”

“The house — Latham Hall,” John said, feeling two steps behind Sherlock as he so often did.

“Of course! Those idiot Stewarts are going to sell it for scrap, and then let some corporation tear it down to put up some cheap planned housing development,” Sherlock said in disgust. “Look at it, John. Really _look_.”

“It’s... It’s nice, but what exactly does this have to do with your mother?”

“I can’t afford it on my own, and you certainly don’t have enough saved up. But between Mother —”

“Afford _what?_ ”

“Latham Hall, obviously. It needs to be restored, not demolished!”

John looked around, wondering if Sherlock had gone mad or caught hold of an idea that was truly brilliant — or both. “You want to move here. You want to _leave London_.”

“Who says we’d have to leave London?” Sherlock challenged. “We’ll work as long as we can, John. Neither of us could give it up. But between cases, we could come here.” His voice dropped, becoming smoothly persuasive as his hands slipped back to comb through John’s hair. “It’s... important. If not for this case, I might never have said...”

Picturing Sherlock anywhere but London was almost impossible. And the thought of a _sentimental_ Sherlock wanting to spend an unthinkable amount of money to buy an old country estate — a _haunted_ old country estate — was absolutely mad.

“Anything,” John promised with a little laugh. “Whatever you want, Sherlock.”

Sherlock ducked down to kiss John, fiercely possessive. “I’ll tell Ethan Stewart that he’s selling to us. You choose where you want your study. You _will_ keep blogging, won’t you?”

“I... I was thinking of writing, actually,” John admitted in a daze. “Those letters that Harold Latham never sent...”

“Perfect. I already know where I want the hives.”

John blinked up at Sherlock. “Hives?”

“Bees, John. The backyard is perfect for keeping bees.”

 

~~~

 

**Thursday, 31 October, 2013**

“You’re never using my laptop again,” John said as he leaned back into the creaky folding chair. He threw a glare into the kitchen for good measure, but Sherlock never looked up from his microscope.

“If mine hadn’t been broken —”

“You mean _shot,_ ” John interrupted, glancing at the progress bar. Yesterday had been the easy part: taking hundreds of photographs of architectural details at Latham Hall. Now, he had to sort out the best pictures and then start soliciting bids from contractors approved by the National Trust as restoration specialists.

“If you hadn’t moved my laptop, it wouldn’t have been shot.”

“And if you hadn’t decided to test a crossbow-and-tripwire trap in our living room, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.”

Sherlock’s huff was his only answer.

John smirked and checked the file transfer. When it finished, he began sorting distractedly through the photographs, listening to the sounds of London outside the window and Sherlock rattling around in the kitchen. Around the thirtieth photograph, Sherlock’s mobile rang. John looked up and rubbed his eyes, feeling the strain in a way that uncomfortably reminded him he wasn’t getting any younger.

“Case?” he asked softly.

Sherlock frowned and shook his head, listening to the caller.

John turned his attention back to the screen. If he’d known what a pain in the arse it would be to take on a restoration project like this, he might’ve just saved time by buying a tent and a beehive and setting up camp at Sherlock’s family estate.

He was a mediocre photographer at best, which meant most of the photographs were slightly blurry or poorly lit. Christ, he hoped he didn’t have to go back to redo all the work. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Latham Hall; he did. He just didn’t like the strain of crouching and climbing ladders to take pictures of wainscotting and moulding and the like.

In the eleven months since he and Sherlock had begun the process to take ownership of Latham Hall, they’d returned there two or three times a month. Most often, their visits had been business — meetings with architects, contractors, and so on — but a few times, they’d managed to sneak away for a quiet weekend, and had spent one blissful week there this past summer, sleeping on a lilo (all the furniture was in the hands of a restoration company specialising in antiques) and arguing fondly over just how many bees were reasonable for one man to keep as pets.

The oppressive chill of Latham Hall was gone, replaced by a warm, inviting feeling. Slowly, the estate was taking its place in John’s heart right beside 221B Baker Street.

“What?” Sherlock asked sharply.

John looked up, but Sherlock’s back was turned. He wasn’t looking John’s way, though, so John turned his attention back to the photographs.

Then he leaned forward, a chill passing through him as he spotted what looked at first to be another poor lighting decision on his part. Only instead of a lens flare or the glare of sunlight on glass, this light was tinged green.

“Shit,” he whispered, tapping the screen to zoom in.

The shot was an overall view of the trophy room at Latham Hall, now empty of furniture and trophies, most of which had been donated to a local museum, though Sherlock had insisted upon keeping the more gruesome ones, and John had kept the tiger-skin rug.

As he zoomed in, the green light resolved into two hazy, amorphous shapes suspended in midair by the hearth, and it took a moment for John to recognise the exact placement where two antique armchairs had once sat.

Two lights.

Two ghosts.

He quickly switched to the next photograph as he darted a look Sherlock’s way to verify that he was still speaking quietly on the phone. John sighed in relief. In almost a year, neither of them had mentioned the ghostly killer, and John privately wondered if Sherlock had somehow managed to delete the apparition from his memory.

“That was Sophie Stewart. Reginald Stewart died,” Sherlock announced as he rang off and set the mobile down beside his microscope.

John shivered, thinking of the photograph. Two lights.

“When?” he asked.

“Yesterday afternoon.” Sherlock rose and started towards John, who quickly glanced at the picture to verify that there was nothing odd — no ghosts. “He went into a coma on Monday. His passing was peaceful,” Sherlock added.

Yesterday afternoon, John had been in the trophy room, taking photographs. He closed his eyes and rubbed at his arms as he took a deep breath.

Sherlock came up behind John’s chair, pulling him into a gentle hug. He rested his chin on John’s shoulder and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Do you need help sorting the photographs?”

“No. No, I’ve got it.” He smiled a bit sadly and said, “Shame about Reginald. Maybe we can go visit his grave, next time we’re down there.”

“If you’d like,” Sherlock promised.

John nodded, leaning back against Sherlock for a moment. “I love you, you know.”

Sherlock tightened his arms and nodded, greying curls rubbing against John’s cheek. “I love you, too.”

 

~~~

 

**Elsewhere**

“Harold? By God, it really is you!” Reggie exclaimed, a smile breaking across his face.

“Hello, Reggie.”

Laughing, Reggie caught Harold in a tight hug, thumping his back with joy. “Harold! Where have you been?”

“Waiting for you, of course.”

“Waiting?” Reggie shook his head, momentarily confused. Then he grinned at Harold, taking him by the shoulders. “You look good, Harold. I’ve missed you.”

Harold smiled, clasping his forearms. “I’ve missed you, too, Reggie.”

“Have you seen Eleanor?”

“No. But she must be around somewhere.”

“Let’s go find her.”

Harold smiled sadly and threw his arm around Reggie’s shoulder. “If you’d like.”

“I don’t have to worry about you running off again, do I?”

“No, Reggie. Always at your side. I swear it.”

Reggie hugged his best friend close as they started walking. “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to my dearest Mitaya and Snogandagrope, who were at my side the whole time, ready to give me a poke if my writing faltered or curse me for the tears.
> 
> Special thanks to Oldamongdreams and taktochno for answering the call for betas to give fresh eyes to the story after some major revisions. Without you two, this would have turned into a tangled mess.
> 
> And finally, thanks to everyone for the kudos and encouraging comments. I hope you enjoyed this!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Book cover for The Master of Latham Hall by Kryptaria](https://archiveofourown.org/works/747111) by [catonspeed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catonspeed/pseuds/catonspeed)




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